The Chicken or the Eagle

It seems to me that, like other Australian institutions, Monash University is a bit confused about what it is that they actually do. In an engineering class we learned that the key to the Wright brothers' ground breaking aviation design, was to realise that a bird’s wing does two completely different tasks. One is provide thrust, and the other is two provide lift. By separating these functions in their design, by having a propeller and a wing, they were able to achieve flight.

Universities do two completely different things as well. One is to impart a sufficient amount of knowledge and know how to students so that they can become professionals in their given field. In this sense some people think of them as ‘degree factories.’ The other objective is to complete research and learn cool new stuff, which people generally believe, will enhance humanity.

Now, why is it that the people who do the research, are also the teachers? Has no one else thought it odd that they effectively have two jobs? Furthermore, it is obvious that most people are either going to be good at one or the other. From a student’s perspective, I don’t care what my lecturer is researching, although I have a rather large vested interest in them being able to teach me something. Strangely, universities (like mine) seem to be fixated on completing ground breaking research to attract more students via their reputation rather than worrying about the quality of teaching that their courses provide.

So what comes first? The teaching or the research? They are obviously both important although if everyone could just learn things straight out of books then the ‘teaching’ would be pointless.

For me, this is only one of many questions universities have to ask themselves if they are to have a clear direction and purpose. For example, are they supposed to make money in their own right or should their graduates be helping the economy enough so that governments can fund them? Are they supposed to be teaching students the relevant knowledge they need to perform a job or are they just sorting them via a series of assessments to help companies choose who to employ? And the big one, what in particular should they be researching? In a place where you can learn almost anything, where people research almost anything, it is no surprise that you constantly hear of funding disputes when there is no common direction for the university as a whole, well, aside from worrying about what other people think.

Skip to the end: A bit of a rant about how lecturer's should be teachers and researchers should be researchers.