The Teaching-Scholarship Paradox

Faculty, Students

The Teaching–Scholarship Paradox at Undergraduate Institutions is often described as a workload problem. That framing is convenient, but it is not accurate. The issue is not that faculty are asked to do too much. The issue is that the system evaluates what they do using a framework that was never designed for the environment in which they operate.

At its core, the PUI model is built on a dual commitment: teaching and scholarship are not separate activities, but intertwined responsibilities. Faculty are expected to teach intensively, mentor closely, and sustain a program of research that is both intellectually meaningful and pedagogically integrated. In principle, this is a coherent model. In practice, the structure used to evaluate faculty performance often reflects assumptions borrowed from research-intensive institutions, where the underlying conditions are entirely different.

The first manifestation of this misalignment is time fragmentation. Faculty at PUIs do not experience time in large, uninterrupted blocks. Instead, their schedules are defined by constant transitions: lecture preparation, classroom instruction, office hours, advising, committee work, and intermittent research activity. Research, in this context, is rarely conducted in extended, continuous stretches. It is distributed across smaller intervals, often dependent on undergraduate schedules, semester timelines, and teaching cycles.

This has direct implications for the type of scholarship that is feasible. Projects tend to be narrower in scope, more iterative, and closely tied to student involvement. Progress is real, but it is nonlinear and often slower by conventional metrics. Yet evaluation systems frequently emphasize outputs such as publication count, journal prestige, and grant funding volume metrics that assume uninterrupted research time, dedicated personnel, and institutional infrastructure that PUIs do not possess.

The result is not merely reduced productivity. It is a distortion of what counts as productive work.

A second layer of the paradox emerges in how teaching is conceptualized. At PUIs, teaching is not limited to content delivery. It includes curriculum design, individualized mentorship, and the integration of students into the research process. When an undergraduate participates in a research project, the faculty member is simultaneously advancing scholarship and providing training. However, in many evaluation frameworks, these activities are categorized separately: teaching is evaluated through student outcomes and course performance, while research is evaluated through external outputs.

This separation fails to capture the fundamental characteristic of the PUI model, that teaching and scholarship are often the same activity, viewed through different lenses.

There is also a structural issue in how impact is defined. In R1 settings, impact is typically external: publications, citations, and grant dollars. At PUIs, a significant portion of impact is internal and longitudinal. It is reflected in student development, skill acquisition, and career trajectories that unfold over years. These outcomes are less immediately visible and more difficult to quantify, but they are central to the institutional mission.

When evaluation systems prioritize externally visible metrics without accounting for these internal forms of impact, they systematically undervalue a substantial portion of faculty contributions.

It is important to emphasize that the PUI model itself is not inherently inefficient or compromised. In fact, it offers distinct advantages. Faculty engagement with students is deeper and more sustained. Research questions are often shaped by pedagogical considerations, leading to projects that are accessible yet meaningful. There is a level of intellectual flexibility that can be difficult to achieve in more hierarchical research environments.

The problem arises when success within this model is measured using criteria that assume a different set of constraints and priorities.

Addressing this paradox does not require reducing expectations for scholarship or teaching. It requires recalibrating how these activities are understood and evaluated. Metrics need to reflect the integrated nature of teaching and research, the realities of time fragmentation, and the forms of impact that are specific to undergraduate-focused institutions.

This may involve recognizing student co-authorship and mentorship outcomes as central scholarly contributions, valuing sustained programmatic research over isolated high-impact publications, and developing evaluation frameworks that account for the temporal structure of PUI work.

Until such alignment is achieved, faculty at PUIs will continue to operate within a system that demands one model of performance while providing the conditions of another. The paradox, then, is not a contradiction within the PUI itself. It is a mismatch between the model and the metrics used to assess it