I'm not really thinking about the creep in tenure standards, though--I'm just saying that the people in charge in a lot of academic institutions just seem plain bored by or uninterested in scholarship as a professional (and professionalizing) activity. They're happy to celebrate the occasional work that gets good press but they don't seem to think of it as having generalized value.
To add an anecdote to support the "primacy of research" side of the argument, I have an old friend who is a star in his chosen field. For personal reasons he left the university where he got tenure and was recruited by a number of universities in the US. The money and benefits offered were close to each other, but the university that got him offered him a reduced teaching load provided that he continued to research and publish. In the sciences and social sciences the university gets a cut of any grant the professor wins.
I'm not really thinking about the creep in tenure standards, though--I'm just saying that the people in charge in a lot of academic institutions just seem plain bored by or uninterested in scholarship as a professional (and professionalizing) activity. They're happy to celebrate the occasional work that gets good press but they don't seem to think of it as having generalized value.
To add an anecdote to support the "primacy of research" side of the argument, I have an old friend who is a star in his chosen field. For personal reasons he left the university where he got tenure and was recruited by a number of universities in the US. The money and benefits offered were close to each other, but the university that got him offered him a reduced teaching load provided that he continued to research and publish. In the sciences and social sciences the university gets a cut of any grant the professor wins.