Not prolific in research, but not lazy either: meet the ‘academic artisans’

This is straw manism. 1) Ive never heard any of these teaching centric colleagues referred to as lazy. 2) Ive also never seen an instance where these supposed artisans do more teaching. Given the academic teaching term usually rolls for 6 months, what are these 'artisans' doing for the rest of the year? 3) the best researchers, across the board, tend to be those that also do the most administration. This all seems like an exercise in making non-research 'academics' feel better about themselves.

In reply to Dee Es I would say that being a successful researcher involves having a great deal of time to devote to gathering data, analysing it and writing it up. It might be possible to combine this with administration and giving time to your Tutees at a Russell Group University but for most of us at new Universities our teaching loads and student numbers make it very difficult. As for what people are doing for 'the other six months' - well if you are teaching a vocational course like social work or nursing- you are supervising students on their placements. Lecturers on Vocational course departments have contact with students every week of the year. Our courses don't stop for 6 months. We also have to constantly liaise with employers who are our stakeholders, respond to changes in professional regulation and provide CPD courses outside normal term time. People can only be in one place doing one task at a time and everyone is better at some tasks than others. This is solved in most fields by division of labour and specialisation. You don't expect your fishmonger to have been out on a trawler all night catching all the fish and seafood s/he is selling. In fact if this was what happened the range of seafood s/he would offer would be pretty limited. Why should you expect someone to be an expert researcher, a good teacher, a negotiator, an administrator and a good provider of pastoral support? Research is a job which requires patience, precise technical skills and an ability to focus on data. Teaching students requires an ability to communicate to a wide non specialist audience. Running a department or team requires skills in coaching and mentoring. Working with employers requires diplomacy and negotiation skills. There are few people who have all these qualities and fewer still who could pay equal attention to them all at the same time. For many academics at new Universities, including myself, writing textbooks is a much more viable and fruitful use of our scholarly time. There is the assurance, through a contract that what we are writing has a market and is not going to be rejected after we have submitted it. There is also the help from an editor in proofreading the work and making it ready for publication. It also plays to our strengths in communication and the satisfaction that it will inform and educate a large number of people rather than a tiny or possibly non- existent audience. As someone who came into academia from the outside world the economics of writing for and publishing in journals are a complete mystery to me. Much of the scholarship in prized journals is of very little interest to anyone in wider society and reading it is prohibitively expensive.