Universities Claim To Value Public Engagement In Scholarship, But Do Not In Practice
Chronicle of Higher Education, Do Universities Value Public Engagement? Not Much, Their Policies Suggest:
Scholarly
work that serves the public is the kind of thing that, theoretically,
universities want faculty members to pursue. But a new study of the
language used by more than 100 colleges in their tenure-and-promotion
criteria shows little evidence that such scholarship is valued in a way
that advances faculty careers [How Significant Are the Public Dimensions of Faculty Work in Review, Promotion, and Tenure Documents?].
And because of that, faculty members are given incentives mostly to pursue research that fits in an established framework.
"There’s
a very entrenched culture that exists around how we review successful
academics," said Juan P. Alperin, the lead author of a report on the
study and an assistant professor in the publishing program at Simon
Fraser University, in Canada, who studies scholarly communications. "We
want this kind of work to be valued on par with the other quantifiable
research outputs that are dominant."