Changes in Academic Staff Perceptions of the Status of Teaching and Research

This paper is based on an opportunity which arose, in a major metropolitan Australian university, to use empirical data to investigate change. The question addressed was whether academic staff's perceptions of the relative importance of teaching and research in the university's reward structure had changed over the nine year period 1973–1982. Reference is made to a theoretical orientation concerning rewards, morale and institutional health, in the framing of hypotheses and in discussion of the implications of the findings. Efforts to change the status of teaching, relative to research, are noted, as well as problems confronting such efforts