In the article in Monday’s The Northern Star on the teacher survey carried out by the UCLA, mention was made of the relationship between research and teaching at this university.

I would like to offer a student’s viewpoint of this relationship.

If education of students is a top priority, at this, or any other large university, teaching and research are the worst possible bedfellows.

Administrators, professors let’s be honest: the greatest benefit of research lies in expanding the university’s coffers in order to attract more researchers and research.

Any benefit which reaches the undergraduate students is of the trickle down variety, with similar miserable results for those in need.

I believe the quality of instruction at NIU is primarily an administrative problem as the decision to support research at the expense of teaching lies at that level.

I cite the ongoing decision to deny tenure to teachers who are not actively devoted to doing “fundamental research,” the abysmal quality of instruction by professors of all varieties, and at the lowest level, the decision to award the most promising graduate students with non-teaching positions in order to devote themselves to full-time research.

Some will argue high quality instruction is rewarded at Northern but the vast majority of actual benefits: tenure, high salaries and noteriety among peers and students are given to researchers.

This judgment is not based on some theoretical notion of what education should be but on my day by day experience of the educational process at NIU.

Michael Leger

Contract major