Don't Care Too Much About Students

Influential economist Greg Mankiw gives advice to new college professors in his blog. Among his suggestions:

"Your focus should be on getting papers published in refereed journals. Everything else is secondary."

"It pays to be a good teacher and a good citizen in your department: Your senior colleagues will be more likely to want to keep you around. But don't deceive yourself into thinking that great teaching or citizenship will make up for a paucity of published research."

At most colleges publishing papers is much more important for career advancement than being a good teacher is. Everyone in academics knows this. This is grossly inefficient, however, given that for at least 90% of professors outside of the sciences our teaching creates greater social benefits than does our research.

Parents who spend a fortune to send their kids to college should keep in mind that their children's professors actually damage their careers if they spend too much time on teaching. Junior professors are often told that it's much better to show up for class unprepared than to devote inadequate time to writing academic papers.