Future concerns 3

Howard Moss is right, up to a point, when he argues that our universities have become research assessment exercise factories.

Unfortunately, academics themselves persistently collude in maintaining the specious distinction between teaching and research.

There are initiatives within the profession to reward committed teachers, but couldn't they be formalised? Why not establish a promoted post, at the same level as reader and principal lecturer, for exemplary teachers? Universities need both teaching and research and surely as a profession we should be able to elide any hierarchical implications.

Kevin McCarron
London