A Global False Dichotomy in Higher Education: Teaching vs. Research

Proceedings of the 2016 International Conference: Global Trends in Higher Education and Cyprus, 2016

The university is a platform of inquiry, discovery and invention i.e. production of wisdom. In the information era, wisdom is the fourth factor of production. Teaching is also an obligation of tertiary education to reproduce available information for society. There are different ways to assess the amount and the quality of service provided by higher educational institutions. Times Higher Education (THE) 2016-17 World University Ranking is an attempt to summarize the performances of leading universities. THE is using the same criteria with the same weights (Teaching 30%, Research 30%, Citations 30%, International Outlook 7.5%, Industrial Income 2.5%) since 2012. In the year 2016 THE evaluated 1313 institutions and ranked 978 of them. The ranking covers 528000 books published within the 2011-2015 period, and the citations they received from the Scopus database. These include books, book chapters, and conference proceedings. I made some correlational and comparative inferences on the data provided by THE World University Ranking. The purpose of this study was to display the correlation between the Teaching and Research performance of universities in the world and in Turkey. Pearson product moment correlation was found to be significantly high and positive. In fact the correlation between Teaching and Research is always the highest one among all the other paired criteria in every different context. This finding is not sufficient but necessary evidence to assert that Teaching and Research do not alternate but reinforce each other in higher education

Studies in Philosophy and …, 2007

INTED2018 Proceedings, 2018

" Teaching vs. research " as a global false dichotomy will be the focus of this study. A modest but very universal evidence is revealing itself in world university rankings in every year. It is not deniable that university rankings are not well taken by intellectuals. They contempt the ranking criteria for being inappropriate and irrelevant for the social, moral, and academic values prevalent at universities. They severely criticize the exploitation of competitive, market driven potentials of universities. So many eminent scholars display their sense of humour by labelling these ranking ritual as " University Olympics " or as " horse race ". It is obvious that such a contest propagates the profitable positions of high rank universities. Fortunately, egalitarian values still reign supreme in higher education. However, equality does not necessitate justice. Justice requires discrimination when needed. It is impossible to ignore the existence of collegial hierarchy. The diversity is a reality among the universities in every country. Neither the students nor the researchers are all alike. Their uneven aptitudes and proficiencies result with ordered categories. These and many other facts compel the ranking culture to endure despite the opposing criticisms mentioned before. As a matter of fact, it is impossible to omit the inter-institutional differences. Instead of resisting the comparative information one can exploit it for the common concern or at least to reinforce the curiosity. Times Higher Education (THE) World University Ranking summarizes annual performances of prominent universities all around the world since 2012. Ranking criteria involves Teaching, Research, Citations International Outlook, and Industrial Income with differential weights. The purpose of this study is to display the correlations between the variables used as criteria to rank the world universities for 2018. It has been hypothesized that Pearson product moment correlations would have been significantly high and positive. Moreover, the correlation between Teaching and Research will be the highest one among all the other paired criteria in every different context.

Scientometrics

Research and teaching are the two most characteristic activities of the professional life of academics. Since the second half of the last century, a plurality of studies focused on the link between these activities, with often contrasting conclusions. While some studies are in line with the von-Humboldtian view of research and teaching as synergistic activities, other studies theorize their uncorrelation or even negative tension. This divergence of views probably stems from the fact that investigations are often based on heterogeneous, limited and difficult-to-generalise data, using mainly qualitative metrics. This paper deepens the study of the research-teaching link, through a survey of 251 academics from Politecnico di Torino, i.e., one of the major Italian technical universities. From a methodological point of view, research and teaching are both analysed from the dual perspective of workload and quality of results obtained, on the basis of data of various kinds, including bibli...

International Journal of Research and Analytical Reviews, 2019

The inexorable advance of the knowledge society and knowledge economy-both fueled by higher education, teaching, research and innovation systems that have undergone a proponed change in the past decade-have made teacher's involvement in research activity increasingly important to all countries, whatever be their level development. Teaching and research are inseparable but Teaching makes better research. The best teacher is also the best researcher bearing a few exceptions. Teaching without research is lackluster and content. In the light of the above assertion, this paper addresses the issues on the nexus between teaching and research in higher educational institutions to meet the demands of the stakeholders of HEI's. We have to reorganize or reshape or reinvent our disciplines, departments and institutions in such a way that it would focus more on the teaching research nexus. This may aid students' learning, enhance their pride in their disciplines and departments, improve staff morale and overall effectiveness of the departments and institutions. Research evidence in western counties have undoubtedly proved that these links have to be created. The nexus does not necessarily occur naturally; reengineering the current practices and policies of higher education may create a climate for the establishment of this nexus. In creating the link, or rather links, besides teacher-researchers, the departments and disciplinary groups within them have a key role to play. The excellence of HEIs lies in building good practices in teaching-research linkage and permits others to learn from the experience of teacher-researchers to strengthen the nexus.

Education Research International, 2022

Many activities have been used to impart knowledge and foster the quality of education at higher education institutions: mainly teaching and research. Higher education institutions have typically focused on the adoption of teaching and research independently, but in many instances, both activities coexist. By taking into account the coexistence, this study empirically analyzed why teaching and research activities appear together and how joint adoption of the activities has economic impacts on the performance of the higher education institutions. To do so, this study tested the existence of complementarity between teaching and research using supermodularity through the data envelopment analysis approach. erefore, the empirical result showed that complementarity between teaching and research confirms that the adoption of one activity strengthens the adoption decision about the other activity. is implies that the institutions that execute both activities simultaneously become more productive rather than adopting a single activity. Moreover, it is important for academic decision-makers to take decisions in order to allow universities to achieve economies of scale.

Higher Education, 1992

This article describes results of an empirical investigation of the relationship between research and undergraduate teaching in Australian higher education. Two research indexes (weighted number of publications, and number of research activities) were used. Scores on a Likert-type scale of reported commitment to teaching undergraduate students formed the main criterion of teaching effectiveness. This was supplemented by student ratings in one of the aggregate-level analyses. The results revealed typically no relation or a negative relation between teaching and research at the level of the individual and at the level of the department, across all subject areas. The only exceptions concerned one group of former colleges of education. Further analysis by staff self-rating of academic quality showed that there existed one group of staff, mainly in the universities, who were committed to teaching and highly active researchers. However, the data did not support a causalinterpretation of the association. It is concluded that there is no evidence in these results to indicate the existence of a simple functional association between high research output and the effectiveness of undergraduate teaching. Some implications for policy and student course choice are discussed.

International Journal of Academic Research in Business and Social Sciences, 2013

Research and Teaching in Higher Education: Complements or Substitutes? In this note we use unique data from Bar-Ilan University, over a period of four years (2005-2008), to estimate simultaneous equations with regard to the relationship between publications and teaching loads. The study shows that students studying for a bachelor's degree are a liability while PhD students are an asset in terms of publications. Those studying for a master's degree may be a liability or an asset depending on the department characteristics. Increasing the number of faculty members increases publications however it may not increase the publications per capita and is department specific.

The Research-Teaching Nexus and Its Influence on Student Learning, 2020

The relationship between teaching and research in universities has been widely studied in the higher education literature, but no clear relationship between the two has been identified. Nevertheless, in recent years, research has been linked to a form of teaching that is more focused on the development of competences and learning capacity through enquiry and the generation of new knowledge. In this context, it is important for teachers and students to work together on the design of shared spaces for research and learning. This work examines the case of the University of Barcelona to analyse whether there is enough connection between research and teaching to allow students to experience this link and to successfully develop research competences. Teaching plans of the academic year 2018-19 were screened to identify research-related competences, the modules they appear in, and the descriptions of the evaluation systems. This information was compared to the students' perceptions of the actual training they had received on these research competences. Results showed that teaching plans establish numerous competences related to research and generating new knowledge. However, students consider that this knowledge is not developed until the final year project.

The focus of this article is on the relationship between research and education. The argument is that recent policy developments and the increasing emphasis on com- mercialisation and profitability of university activities weakens the connection of education and research. In this article, general characteristics of development of uni- versities and university policy in Finland are summarised. Main subjects of the analy- sis are three university departments that are situated in three different Finnish uni- versities. The concept of connection between research and education is explored and tested in these three cases. The relationship between research and education and its erosion is analysed with the help of four definitions of education's research connection. The article shows that regardless of the definition, the connection be- tween research and education is becoming fragile as a result of practical, instrumen- tal and commercial aspirations of university activities.