Do Universities Value Public Engagement? Not Much, Their Policies Suggest - The Chronicle of Higher Education

Do Universities Value Public Engagement? Not Much, Their Policies Suggest - The Chronicle of Higher Education
"Scholarly work that serves the public is the kind of thing that, theoretically, universities want faculty members to pursue. 
But a new study of the language used by more than 100 colleges in their tenure-and-promotion criteria shows little evidence that such scholarship is valued in a way that advances faculty careers.
And because of that, faculty members are given incentives mostly to pursue research that fits in an established framework.

The researchers looked for the words "public," "community," and "impact" in the documents and examined their context. They also looked for mentions of traditional research outputs such as books, grants, and journal articles, and for mentions of impact, metrics, and open access...

Among their findings:

• The term "community" is mentioned by 87 percent of institutions at either the university or academic-unit level, while 75 percent mention the term "public." But a closer look at the context reveals the true status of those terms. Although the words "service" and "research" are near those two terms most frequently, "service" is mentioned more than twice as often as "research" in that context. Such placement suggests that the terms refer to what the authors describe as "the least highly regarded" tenure-and-promotion criteria — the service component — with the others being research and teaching. The way the words are used in the policies also suggests that the terms pertain to service to the discipline or the institution, not necessarily to the broader public..."

Read on.