The learning process

Universities fetishize doing research on the assumption that production of new work enhances faculty's ability to teach. Much more important than the production of "new" work I would think is having faculty that are dynamic and engaged in an ongoing learning process and able to transmit enthusiasm to their students. This is certainly something that is very difficult to measure, so I think that publications are the best proxy that universities have landed on. Certainly producing research that is able to bang its way past gatekeepers into hierarchized journals was in years past the best yardstick available.

By now one has to wonder whether the creation of a Substack or the like which garners readership might be a better measure. Of course, people -- scum that they are sometimes -- would be likely to fake their traffic.