Universities need to teach – and do research

Are the resources of our universities too skewed towards encouraging research rather than teaching? I think Professor John Haldane introduced a false dichotomy in his reflections on how to tackle the effects of cuts in public expenditure (Opinion, 17 February). There can be no high-quality teaching at higher education level in the long run without the support of high-quality research to back up ideas, investigation and detailed argument.

In economics and history, for example, new facts and statistics are emerging continuously to challenge accepted theories. Surely the effective teacher has to be on top of these details, know how to present them and be able to encourage students not just to weigh up different views: they have to be made aware of their practical application in the modern world, and encouraged to develop marketable skills too.

Prof Haldane suggests that the taxpayer's patience with some of the more obscure research projects is running out. But this, too, creates an artificial division. The people who work, study and research in universities, and their families and friends, are taxpayers. Even those who have never set foot in a university building, or availed themselves of any of their facilities, can be beneficiaries of their work in all sorts of ways.

The real challenge for higher education is to minimise bureaucratic waste and duplication of effort. It is not to minimise the importance of invest-igation in order to bolster outdated teaching methods.

BOB TAYLOR

Shiel Court

Glenrothes, Fife

With regard to John Haldane's article, what is also common practice is the conduct of research by academic staff that is not funded by the normal external research funding bodies.

Some academic staff are commonly given time allowances – in effect, relief from teaching – to develop research activity, mostly aimed at the generation of research papers for publication in the burgeoning number of peer-reviewed research journals. This research is, of course, in reality often funded by the resources that are provided for the teaching of students. And if you speculate that some of the funded research might be of little value then – as everyone the sector knows – many of these journal articles will do very well indeed to be read by more than a handful of people. I would even suggest that, for many published journal papers, apart from those who wrote them and those who reviewed them, they are not read by anyone at all.

As a recently retired university professor, I do support the notion that much university research is of little value, particularly the unfunded variety as above, and should be greatly reduced to better focus resources on the teaching of students.

RON MASSON

Fountainhall Road

Edinburgh