A Study Showing Research Has Been Valued over Teaching in Higher Education Based on the Theories of Neoliberalism and Academic Capitalism

Research has been valued and given priority over teaching for a long time in academia.  In recent decades, the Taiwanese Ministry of Education has pursued objective and quantitative research criteria and has encouraged higher education institutions to ask teachers to publish papers in SSCI or SCI journals as part of the criteria for promotion and evaluation.  This policy strengthens the concept that research has priority over teaching because teachers must devote more time to research than to teaching in order to be promoted and evaluated.

The purpose of this study is to explore the influences that cause teachers to value research over teaching.  To achieve this purpose, the study will apply document analysis and questionnaire inquiry as research methodology.  First of all, the study will collect and analyze the documents for teacher promotion and evaluation of ten different universities.  In order to collect the differing requirements of the reward system in different areas, these ten universities' areas of specialty include general studies, education, medicine, vocational studies, and arts.  Then, the study will use questionnaires to collect teachers' opinions of task priority and the time involved on research and teaching duties.  The data collected from the above two methods will be analyzed and discussed based on the theory of Neoliberalism and the regime of Academic Capitalism.  Some suggestions will be proposed according to the results.