Precarity makes teaching pathways to professorship impassable
When the Teaching Excellence Framework was introduced in 2017, universities were keen to demonstrate that teaching would finally enjoy the status traditionally accorded to research. New education-focused career pathways appeared, some extending to professorship. The message was clear: academics who specialised in teaching would no longer have to become conventional researchers to progress.
Some of those routes have produced genuine promotions, and it would be unfair to dismiss them as merely cosmetic. But their existence has not displaced the deeper assumption that still shapes academic recruitment and reward: that research excellence is the most reliable marker of academic excellence overall.
That assumption is remarkably persistent, despite the evidence.
Universities often behave as though appointing the strongest researcher will naturally produce strong teaching. Certainly, many research-active academics are excellent educators, and research can enrich teaching. But teaching and research are not the same professional practice, so success in one does not reliably predict success in the other. Hattie and Marsh’s 1996 meta-analysis of 58 studies found essentially no relationship between research productivity and teaching effectiveness.
Teaching requires curriculum architecture, assessment literacy, inclusive design, group facilitation, motivational support and rapid pedagogical judgement. It requires recognising when students are confused, when an activity is failing, when a cohort needs more structure and when an explanation must be abandoned and rebuilt. It also involves substantial emotional and relational labour: supporting anxious students, responding to accessibility needs, managing disengagement and sustaining a productive learning environment. None of this automatically accompanies a strong publication record.
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Universities need excellent researchers. The problem begins when research achievement is treated as evidence of general academic excellence, while demonstrated teaching expertise is considered useful but insufficient.
I am currently on my second fixed-term teaching-intensive contract. I design and convene modules, teach large cohorts, supervise dissertations, assess and moderate work, provide accessibility adjustments and contribute to curriculum development. My teaching has received institutional recognition. Yet, structurally, I remain temporary.
In less than two years at my university, my department has appointed 10 permanent teaching-and-research lecturers and is currently advertising for another four. This is not a criticism of those colleagues, who may be excellent teachers as well as researchers. Nor do I know the full reasoning behind each appointment. But the contrast is difficult to ignore. Permanent investment has continued through posts carrying an explicit research trajectory, while demonstrated educational contribution has not translated into equivalent employment security.
Yes, there now exists a teaching-focused route to professorship – in theory. But academics need secure posts from which to aim for such career heights. Fixed-term status limits the ability to plan multi-year curriculum reform, develop pedagogic research, mentor colleagues or accumulate the educational leadership that promotion criteria often demand.
The wider workforce data reinforce the contradiction. In 2024-25, 35 per cent of UK academics were employed on teaching-only contracts, while 29 per cent of academic staff remained on fixed-term contracts. These figures should not be conflated: not all teaching-only academics are temporary, and not all fixed-term academics are teaching-focused (many are research-focused postdocs). But the figures do underline that universities depend heavily on teaching-specialist labour while contractual insecurity remains embedded across the sector.
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At the same time, universities sell students an experience built overwhelmingly around teaching, assessment, feedback, support and belonging. In the 2026 National Student Survey, 88.1 per cent of respondents were positive about the teaching on their course. Institutions monitor satisfaction, continuation, progression and graduate outcomes intensely because these affect reputation, regulation and recruitment.
Universities know perfectly well that teaching quality matters. Yet recruitment and promotion continue to give disproportionate weight to publications, grants and potential for the Research Excellence Framework.
That imbalance is often defended on practical grounds. Research brings prestige, funding and league table advantage. In a financially pressured sector, those things matter. But it is still an institutional choice to treat research as a long-term investment and teaching as delivery that must somehow be covered. It is a choice to regard the researcher as an asset worth retaining and the teacher as a staffing requirement.
I am not saying that teaching staff should be promoted simply for doing their jobs well. Progression in any pathway should require sustained expertise, leadership and influence. But if universities are serious about teaching-focused careers, they should be judged not by whether a professorial endpoint exists on paper but by what happens throughout the pathway. Are excellent teachers appointed permanently? Are they given time to undertake pedagogic scholarship? Can they progress without having to imitate a conventional research career? Are their contributions treated as intellectually valuable rather than merely operationally necessary?
Until excellent teachers are recruited, promoted and retained as specialists, teaching will continue to be praised rhetorically while being discounted structurally.
The author prefers to remain anonymous.