The conundrum between HE teaching & research was discussed much early in USA. Interestingly, it was highlighted that reducing R&D budget will hamper the teaching and learning advancement.
‘Learning in A Research University’
1994-President Vest’s letter to the parents of MIT undergraduates.
I believe that where there are problems with undergraduate education in this country, it is more often because of a separation of teaching and research, rather than an overemphasis on research. The discipline, joy and continual renewal of original research, scholarship or other creative intellectual activity keeps teachers lively and successful. One may start out as an effective and even brilliant teacher, but without the kind of continual renewal that research and scholarship provide, one may not grow in wisdom and breadth, and over time may lose rather than gain in effectiveness as a teacher.
This is an issue that I often discuss with members of Congress and federal policy makers, because government support of education and research is critical to our future. Indeed, I believe a very serious threat to our faculty’s commitment to teaching is the increasing difficulty in finding funding for research and graduate student support, as research dollars shrink and merit and peer review give way to pork barrel politics. The surest way to dampen our faculty’s teaching, and our students’ learning, would be to cut research budgets, thereby increasing the time that faculty must devote to proposal writing and administration rather than to teaching and research.
To enable our students to reach their full potential to participate in our society and, just as importantly, to enjoy fully the beauty and the adventure of creating and understanding, we have to teach them how to advance our knowledge. That is why I believe that the very best learning environment is one in which undergraduate and graduate education are blended with the conduct of research and scholarship. The issue should not be teaching versus research, it should be the proper interweaving of the two.
