Professors Hold On to a Fading Ideal as Universities Pull Teaching and Research Apart

The idea that university professors should both teach and research has been a cornerstone of academic life since the nineteenth century, when Humboldt’s vision of the university fused knowledge creation with knowledge transmission. Yet a new qualitative study from Norway suggests that while professors still hold this ideal close to their hearts, the modern university is quietly dismantling the conditions that allow them to live it. The research, published in Frontiers in Education, offers an unusually intimate look at how sixteen professors in philosophy, mathematics, law and medicine at two Norwegian research-intensive universities make sense of the relationship between teaching and research in their everyday working lives.

The study, led by Cecilie Johanne Slokvik Hansen of the University of Bergen together with Kjetil Egelandsdal and Marit Ulvik, does not ask whether teaching and research are connected, a question that has fuelled decades of statistical meta-analyses with mixed results. Instead, the researchers ask something more subtle: how does the connection between teaching and research survive as a meaningful, taken-for-granted part of what it means to be a professor, even as organisational arrangements increasingly pull the two activities apart? The answer, they find, lies in the shared beliefs and habits of academics themselves, beliefs that are now being strained by course structures, workload models, funding mechanisms and the rise of research-only positions.

To explore this, the team conducted semi-structured interviews lasting between seventy and one hundred thirty minutes with sixteen associate and full professors, four from each of the four disciplines. Participants had worked in university positions for anywhere from four to more than thirty years, and their formal allocations of research time varied considerably, from twenty-five to fifty percent in philosophy, mathematics and law, to just twenty percent university positions alongside clinical practice for medical professors. The researchers analysed the transcripts using a phenomenological approach rooted in the sociology of knowledge, drawing on concepts such as typification, sedimented knowledge and objectification to understand how shared meanings about academic work are built, maintained and, potentially, eroded.

What emerged was a strikingly consistent picture across all four disciplines. Professors described research-based teaching not simply as a way of delivering up-to-date content, but as a way of inhabiting the academic role itself. A philosophy professor explained that being a researcher means looking at things in a completely different way than if you were just repeating something. A law professor said that being an active researcher in the field she teaches allows her to gain a much deeper understanding and elaborate on specific issues to a far greater extent than if she were not. Medical professors emphasised that long periods without engaging in research risk eroding the ability to question what is held as truth, with one noting that completing a doctorate gave them a humbler relationship to what the truth is.

Perhaps most strikingly, professors across all four disciplines described teaching and research as intertwined ways of thinking and working within a shared field of knowledge rather than as separate tasks bundled into the same job. A law professor observed that those who practice law work with exactly the same method as researchers do, with the difference lying only in the level of requirements, accuracy and thoroughness. A mathematician noted that although mathematics is an old discipline, the course portfolio must constantly be renewed, with the content of undergraduate courses in continuous development over twenty years. In medicine, professors described how research, clinical practice and teaching continuously intersect, allowing them to offer students reflections on what knowledge is now, what it might be in twenty years, and where we stand today, not as fixed truth but as something that evolves.

Teaching and supervision also emerged as shared disciplinary spaces where professors and students meet around common intellectual questions. Law professors described monthly lunches with students as a possibility for getting an academic community, calling it a win-win. Philosophy professors spoke of seminars as opportunities to test things out with students and have discussions with them, with one recalling publishing an article after two students confronted him with his interpretation of a text during an introductory course. A mathematics professor insisted that supervision is research, describing weekly hour-long conversations as really fun. In medicine, teaching in the clinic was described as a collective endeavour where students participate in understanding clinical situations together with their mentors.

Yet alongside these affirmations of the teaching-research nexus, the interviews revealed a growing set of organisational conditions that make the ideal increasingly difficult to enact. Professors in philosophy, mathematics and law frequently described teaching compulsory courses misaligned with their own specialised research. A law professor explained that international law covers everything from the law of war to passport issues, making it lucky to have half an hour for his own field in a five-day course. In philosophy, elective courses once shaped by individual interests have been reduced due to limited budgets, with one professor recalling that seminars in his student days could focus on a single book, something that today would be seen as too specialised. In mathematics, funding models tied to student numbers mean courses depend on income rather than expertise, with teaching described as the department’s bread and butter.

The pressures extend beyond course design. Professors described increasing demands to apply for externally funded projects, with large-scale grants leading to buyouts from teaching. One mathematician reported being bought out of teaching for much of the year, while another highlighted how researcher-only positions created for project work cause a headache, with permanent researchers who are not allowed to teach. Administrative systems, intensified student administration, altered course structures, reduced research time and the expansion of teaching-only and research-only positions all contributed to a widening gap between the two activities. These developments did not necessarily weaken professors’ belief in the value of combining teaching and research, but they made it progressively harder to practise.

The researchers interpret these findings through three theoretical concepts. Typification refers to the shared understanding of the academic role as one in which teaching and research belong together, giving the nexus legitimacy even when everyday arrangements make it hard to realise. Sedimented knowledge captures how this understanding has become historically embedded in academic practices and taken for granted over time, rooted in the Humboldtian tradition and codified in Norwegian legislation and university strategies. Objectification describes how shared meanings become institutionalised in course plans, workload models, funding schemes and teaching routines, so that over time, new organisational arrangements can reshape what professors come to see as the normal way academic work is organised.

The study’s authors argue that this is not simply a gap between values and practice, but a process through which changing organisational arrangements reshape the meanings available to academics. The teaching-research nexus remains meaningful, they conclude, but fragile. Professors continue to draw on a typified and sedimented understanding of academic work as combining teaching and research, while the conditions under which this combination can be enacted are shifting beneath them. The researchers suggest that institutional efforts to sustain the nexus need to consider how workload models, course structures, funding mechanisms and differentiated academic positions shape the opportunities professors actually have to live the ideal they still believe in. The study is limited to sixteen interviews within one national context and does not support statistical generalisation, but its interpretative findings offer a transferable lens for understanding how academics everywhere are navigating the tension between what they believe academic work should be and what their institutions increasingly allow it to become.

Subject of Research: How university professors sustain and experience the teaching-research nexus under changing organisational conditions

Article Title: The teaching-research nexus under pressure: sustaining ideals in uneven and changing times across disciplines

Article References: Hansen, C. J. S., Egelandsdal, K., & Ulvik, M. (2026). The teaching-research nexus under pressure: sustaining ideals in uneven and changing times across disciplines. Frontiers in Education, 11, Article 1888722. https://doi.org/10.3389/feduc.2026.1888722

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.3389/feduc.2026.1888722

Keywords: teaching-research nexus, higher education, academic identity, research-based teaching, qualitative interviews, Norwegian universities, academic workload, neoliberalism, disciplinary culture, supervision, professor role, organisational change