I think that there is no perfect world-wide answer.  It is VERY dependent on your school.  

For example, in the hard sciences at a large research university, 40% teaching might be too much.  In the social sciences at a small a liberal arts college, 40% research might be too high.

I think that there is no perfect world-wide answer.  It is VERY dependent on your school.  

For example, in the hard sciences at a large research university, 40% teaching might be too much.  In the social sciences at a small a liberal arts college, 40% research might be too high.

Dear Michael: I agree with you. But let me improve the question and add the following: if we focus only on the academic merit which reflect on improving the students knowledge,reflect positively on the community, and lead the country to a new platform. This mean we ignoring all other variables (finance, etc). So, what is the percentage?

Thank you very much Dr.Hussein A Kazem on this discussion

I am a listener

Dr. Kazem, this is a very important yet sensitive issue on many campuses, for faculty and administrators alike. Similarly to Dr. Marek's response, I think institutional context, mission, and strategic planning are key. When making changes to the expectations of the distributions of effort, it is important that the administration and other important bodies, like the tenure and promotion committee are in alignment. If the institution prizes teaching and learning in a more traditional sense, then I think a 60-70% teaching load is appropriate, especially if the expectations for research/publication and service are limited. Then again, it is hard for an institution to make changes toward improvement if all the faculty are so loaded with teaching that any service requirements become a bit onerous. Personally I like the distribution for teaching, research, and service to be 60-15-25. Unless the university can make a case for supporting the amount of work required for solid research and publication, the publish or perish mindset becomes a contagion of negativity, leading to low work satisfaction and poor community relations. Purposeful and actionable service is also a must.

An interesting question Dr Kazem. When you ask about %, you must be talking about the weighting of the loading distribution of academic staff in any institutuion. I had been doing a research based on the what is termed the actual CONTACT HOURS of teaching per week. My main aim is to find out what is the right ratio of administrative duties to the academic's contact hours in a week so that staff are not overloaded.

Would be following this forum though.

Thanks Nicholas and Saimonai for the fruitful discussion. Teaching load usually range between 10-20 hours/week. However, any increase in the teaching load reflected negatively on the research item. Especially, if we take in consideration the high number of students, which sometime reach 500 students. As you know you need much time for consultation, marking, advising, etc. On my best knowledge, research with impact (innovative research) need time.

I think it depends on the vision and mission of the institute. If they are looking for teaching priority instead of the research or they looking for research as a priority. Or if they looked for a balance between them. However, I think 40% for teaching, 40% for research and 20% for services is fair enough. regards

Hello There.

The perspectives in this paper representing the position at two Australian universities may make a helpful contribution to this debate:

https://www.aheia.edu.au/cms_uploads/docs/dianajanine.pdf

I would also like to recommend some research in this space by colleagues, Dr. John Kenny and Dr. Andrew Fluck:

John D.J. Kenny & Andrew E. Fluck (2014) The effectiveness of academic

workload models in an institution: a staff perspective, Journal of Higher Education Policy and Management, 36:6, 585-602.

Kenny J, (2016) 'Academic work and performativity', Higher Education: The International Journal of Higher Education and Educational Planning pp. 1-17.

Kenny J, Fluck A, Jetson T, (2012). 'Placing a value on academic work', Australian Universities' Review, 54, (2) pp. 50-60.

Speaking personally, I am a 40:40: 20 academic working at an institution committed to producing world class research and climbing the international rankings in terms of research outputs and generation of research income. The institution created Research Performance Expectations (RPEs) which are based upon publications, research income; and Higher Degree Research candidate supervision and completions. All of these metrics carry points which come to have some bearing on performance management and promotion decisions. There is an expectation that all academics meet the published minimum expectations and a points scale beyond this demonstrating good, very good, and outstanding performance. There are other metrics based upon student evaluations of teaching performance and (less well-developed) Teaching Performance Expectations(TPEs) and perhaps in due course Community Performance Expectations (CPEs) to capture relevant professional contributions in internal service, community engagement, and leadership.

I doubt that institutions will reach 'perfection' in this space - and as Michael and Nicholas indicate, policies will be institution and mission-specific and tailored. But Higher Education institutions do need to be held to reasonable levels of fairness and transparency. As others have indicated it is possible to negotiate changes to the standard workload allocation and secure agreement to be research or teaching intensive (60%). The devil can also often lie in the detail of policy implementation.

It would be nice to think that a 'parity of esteem' could exist between research and teaching contributions and that positive measures and metrics can be found for the leadership, community, and public academic contributions that can be less easy to measure. It would also be nice to hold on to the conception of the teaching/research nexus.

Thank you for raising this issue - it will be interesting to read other contributors' thoughts.

Peter Brett

I published a research paper about this questions. You can read the Structured Abstract in English .

Thanks Peter. I agree with you. 40:40:20 is fair enough and efficient. I wonder what is the situation in the top rank universities?

Dear Gamze: Thanks for the paper. I read the abstract but it is not clear enough for me. I am not sure what is the percentage in your investigations?

There is no hard and fast methodology for load distribution (in our university it is known as academic engagement as load has a negative connotation to it). The norms as prescribed by UGC are fair enough which talk about as the seniority increases, the academic endeavour should be balanced by research and administration.