Loyal to your students over your self or school

This is my answer

I would see loyalty at a higher level than these individual component level.  That is to say if one is loyal to his/her profession, he/she is likely to be loyal to everything else related to his/her profession, including his/her school, students, associations, journals, colleagues etc.

If we are loyal to teaching as a profession, we will automatically be loyal to students. Loyalty to the institution is a give and take process, if university harnesses your skills and recognises your contribution only then the institutional loyalty will exist. 

Are you more loyal to your university, your students, or to your individual career?

"Loyalty" to students deserve highest weightage among the three options.  Reason being "loyalty" to students in the right way persistently can influence how the university evaluate your performance and alleviate your career status as a researcher / scholar contributing to knowledge / partial success of your students.  Moreover, the success of your students can trigger chain effect to contribute further knowledge / success of others.

If the situation persists to be loyal to the university then every teacher should be loyal. But sometimes university doesn't recognize this. But a teacher must loyal to his/her teaching, research and other services to the university as well as to the community.

A couple of remarks: Can' t we be loyal to truth and knowledge-for-the-sake-of humanity? Remember Aristotle: "I am your friend, but I am more a friend of truth than yours". Sort of.

You can play the game with anyone-you-want. However, you cannot betray yourself. Once you betray yourself everything is lost, for good.

Being loyal to humanity, including our environmental context, the Earth, is the best way to serve university, students, and career, in my humble opinion.

The main "customer" is always the student.

I like Prof. Punčochář's view. The university consists of persons. Personally, I am more loyal to honest persons who prove that there are still moral principles at Universities.

Regards

I always try to be loyal to my heart and to my moral principles in life.

I am loyal with me, my profession and autonomy. Rest factors may not contribute my honesty with my university and students and definitely I believe two side affair.

Educating generation next is a mission of all teachers. The mission never gets completed at any time - being an ongoing process. The vital point is how much of the knowledge & technology gets into the students - so that they can take on the baton further. Performance of students in their future career reflects to a great extent a teacher's performance. 

Hence he has to be loyal to his subjects, correct teaching methods, & see that the generation next dutifully innovates, so that the society is progressive at all times.

Michael - interesting question. Did the answers influence your own feelings? I think that there is a difference in how we feel depending on where we are at the moment. In a perfect world, they are all allowed to be equal. But, in reality, conditions do force us to choose - Teach more? Research more but cut back on student interactions? Engage as a leader on campus for student enrichment at the expense of research and working with individual students? RTP process requires research is a priority but teaching is on a constant deadline with prep & grading.....University service is fun but undervalued in RTP.... and, I am an adjunct so that adds a rough impact as well - need to work many jobs to pay the bills therefore time for university service & research is decreased....