Why are top researchers paid so much while top teachers are recognized, if at all, with awards of little dollar value?

We wonder, could it somehow have to do with the research function being just a little more clearly defined as "public" good than the more personally-directed academic function, which may be seen by more as a "private" good? These authors go from here:

During your undergraduate studies you were introduced to several luminaries in your field who receive considerable attention from the news media and are often on the lecture circuit. They are well-known for their six-figure salaries and commanding positions in your discipline. So far, it’s all good. Except …

Unfortunately, the luminosity of the luminaries has nothing to do with their teaching prowess; it is entirely due to their scholarship. There is a thriving market for senior scholars in higher education -- a market that brings plenty of release time from teaching, along with high salaries and fame.

There is no corresponding market for world-class teachers. No one in higher education becomes famous or well-compensated for exceptional teaching. How could this happen, since the students, parents, and taxpayers (those who pay the bills) have only a passing interest in research, but an abiding and personal stake in high-quality teaching?

Before we address that question, it is important to note there are many social benefits to be derived from an efficient market for senior scholars; the existence of that market is not the problem. Only spite and envy would ban the market for scholars as some ill-conceived “fix” for the imbalance between teaching and research. The correct response is to learn why we have a market for scholars and no market for teachers.

The critical reason why one market exists and the other does not is the information available to potential employers. Potential employers of professors have sufficient information to judge scholarly productivity, but virtually no information that would allow them to judge teaching productivity.

Tomorrow's Professor Mailing List is one of the best lists we subscribe to, and not just because they occasionally republish some good SCUP faculty-related materials. The list describes itself as "desk-top faculty development, one hundred times a year." And it is.

A recent post to that website is Connie D. Foster's review from Planning for Higher Education of the book, Organizing Higher Education for Collaboration: A Guide for Campus Leaders by Adrianna J. Kezar and Jaime Lester. 

Foster's conclusion:

To create and sustain change means rethinking overall organizational structures, processes, and design as well as understanding the critical roles of mission, core values, and leadership skills. In The Courage to Lead: Transform Self, Transform Society, Brian Stanfield describes the journey of the organization. He states, "More and more, organizations are beginning to realize that they have to change their whole network in many dimensions-a process that has been called whole-system transformation. A first step in this wholistic change is transforming the organization's current worldview" (Stanfield 2000, p. 151). Organizing Higher Education for Collaboration is a book that can help a higher education institution rethink its worldview, a valuable exercise in these challenging times.

Sheila Croucher studies nations and nationalism. She sees strong parallels between "academic disciplines and departments in universities, on the one hand, and modern nation-states in the international system, on the other," and writes in this essay about how consideration of those parallels might be helpful in making institutional change happen. This thought-provoking piece from The Chronicle of Higher Education is a must-read. Unfortunately, you may find that you need either a subscription or to purchase a day pass to get at the entirety of it.

No blood has been or, one hopes, will be shed over questions of university restructuring. Still, some of the discourse about disciplinary identity and departmental belonging—how they might be threatened by possible institutional change, and why both must be preserved at all costs—can sound primordial. We know, even more clearly than we do with nations, that academic disciplines and departments are inventions. They have been constructed in specific historical contexts and shaped by specific sociopolitical, economic, and institutional circumstances.

But we also know, as with nation-states, that many people care deeply about their disciplinary identities and departmental belonging, and that many of the leaders of what we might call "academic nation-states" will endeavor to protect and promote their constituencies—often appropriately so. At my institution, the College of Arts and Science is engaging in a process of restructuring, and in the early weeks of our discussions, fear seemed rampant. Smaller departments hunkered down, anticipating annexation by larger ones with allegedly imperial ambitions, and some chairs heroically proclaimed their commitment to defend the borders of the department of X. Even departments with histories of dysfunction were loath to explore the possibility of reorganization. Some chairs and faculty members assumed that departmental reorganization would lead to the dissolution of disciplines. Others offered ideas for innovative curricular or pedagogical change, but those ideas typically resided within the departmental boundaries.