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Generalists fulfill an important role. I've just started back teaching Intro over the last few years and it's amazing how much I have to go back and teach myself about my field. My research focuses on a small percent of a section of the entire field. Someone with a broad understanding of the field would do a better job teaching Intro. On the flip side, they wouldn't be able to teach the courses I can teach on education where I can go into detail about my research.

Agreed. And depending on the model, it is often the graduate students who teach those introductory classes -- often an undergraduate's introduction to the field, and the class that might very well make or break their decision to major.
 
But there has been a distinct divide in the responsibility to teach and do research that is slowly being codified.

This is correct, but I would argue that this divide has already long been codified.

The trend now, at least in the humanities, is to move away from that model. Because of the overabundance of qualified labor, PhDs on the job market are now largely expected to be experts in both: so-called regional teaching colleges now have the luxury of requiring their new hires to teach traditional 4-4 loads and publish widely without offering the research support that candidates for SLAC and R1 jobs have come to expect. And SLAC and R1 hires outside of the very top tier are often now expected to teach 2-3 and even 3-3 loads (when that load would traditionally be 2-1 or 2-2). The labor crisis in academia has really been quite brilliant for regional colleges in America, though many of them still prefer to load up on contingent labor and put the money from cut tenure lines towards administrative and "campus-life" positions.
 
Good points about the divides between institutions. I was thinking more within departments. The distinction between teaching tenured faculty and research tenured faculty is slowly being codified.
 
Good points about the divides between institutions. I was thinking more within departments. The distinction between teaching tenured faculty and research tenured faculty is slowly being codified.

Interesting. I don't see that divide happening at all in my field -- definitely moreso on an institutional level. Is it is a disciplinary thing? Is teaching perhaps more valued by "researchers" in subjects with less quantitative content or methods?
 
It goes back to the list I posted before. Theoretically all faculty are supposed to do all of those things. But some faculty focus on some more than others. There's been talk at my institution of changing teaching loads based on research activity and grantsmanship. Perhaps that wishful thinking of some of us more research-active faculty who think it's ridiculous that we bring in big $$$ and publish but we're teaching the same 2-2 load as our tenured peers who aren't doing jack for research. We also have a rule that only research-active faculty (one publication over the last 3 years so not ridiculous) can chair PhD committees so the load tends to fall on some faculty and not others.
 

Agreed. There are a lot of problems with how prestige is conferred in education. It often ends up being a self-fulfilling prophecy. The "best" students go somewhere so it must be the "best" school. Rinse. Repeat. It doesn't take into the range of factors that influence college decisions, especially the personal factors.

Military Times does a comprehensive ranking of best colleges for veterans based on their analysis of what veterans need.
 
the girls in my day really did have it made, very few of em were any more than 6's and they still had all the power
 
I remember the sinking feeling I had when I moved to Gainesville for law school in the fall after completing undergrad at Wake. I had a semester off...I was a spring semester entrant for law school. So I got a job with UF as a reserach assistant and partied through football season.

Oh my Lord. The difference. I'm a normal looking short (5'9) white dude and was getting laid at will. If you could talk and smile occasionally, drink beer and toss out a few standard compliments that was it. And they were all cute girls, whereas the girls at Wake in the late 90's were well below average. I realized what 4 years at UF in a frat might have been like for $60K less. I definitely got a more well rounded and detailed education at Wake than my state school peers in law school, but I've forgotten most of it now anyway. What I'll never forget are the nursing students at my Gainesville apartment complex who had so many fucks to give, and none of those fucks were related to commitment.
 
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