I've been doing a lot of analysis of organizational decline over the past month, and what characterizes R&D (including academia) is extreme convexity: http://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2013/03/14/gervais-macle... Convexity pertains to the shape of the curve for output (profits, value added, impact) per input (investment, skill, effort, and just plain luck). It pertains to desirable risk behavior (convex => seek ris…
This is silly. It's purely a historical fluke that the role of professor (scientist/teacher) even exists. There is no reason whatsoever why the same person should both create new knowledge and also teach calculus/cs 101/etc. I was good at research, but I sucked at teaching [1]. In contrast, many people are really terrible researchers, but actually pretty good teachers. (As you note, there is a glut of such people, so…
How about that the person using the tool every day in the course of their work is probably going to be the person best placed to teach others how to use it? Obviously teaching is a skill and craft that has to be taught, but given two people of equal teaching ability, the person using the tool every day should be the better choice, surely?