The job of the teacher

Okay, here's something I haven't discussed.

I didn't think I would have to, but people are surprising me today.

For reference, this post arises from a criticism made of two professors at Transy who were up for tenure recently. Their promotion was deferred because they weren't academically published yet.

This has sparked lots of controversy and discussion on the relative duties of professors.

That discussion has pissed me off.

Why is there anyone who thinks that a professor's first priority shouldn't be imparting knowledge to students?
What world do you live in where it's more important for a professor to be furthering their own career than furthering the education of their students who depend on their teacher to be ready, enthusiastic, and helpful in their job?
That's the exact opposite of what we need in this society.

If you're not interested in teaching students, don't teach students.
And if you want professors you hire not to focus on students first, just quit your job, walk away, and find some nice hole in middle-management to crawl into and die.

It is unacceptable to treat students as a means to an end, whether by using them for their tuition money or by having their professors spend their precious hours on something totally unrelated to the educational process. The entire purpose of having these institutions is for the growth and preparation of the next generation of academics and workers.

As a country, how about we pay people to research. Or pay them to write.
If they don't want to teach, let's pay them to use their intellect in other useful realms instead of shoe-horning them into one career that requires both, regardless of which one they're actually interested in (or good at) Lumping all academics together as teachers and writers is just... Nonsensical and antithetical to serious educational processes.

What makes it even worse is that college professors don't have to take any sort of courses in education. So long as you have mastered your own area of study, you're allowed to teach students about that area and somewhat related areas. Even if you don't know the first thing about teaching.
Even if you're an awful teacher. There are some programs which require you to take a single, several-hour crash course on education. However, I'm not familiar with any program that requires you to have actual educational training in order to be able to teach college students.
Implicitly, there's an assumption going on that college students are smart enough to pick up the material even with a teacher who's lacking in that capacity, but that's an awful approach that relies on the students to teach themselves, at which point, we might as well not have the professors in the first place.

The future of our government, economy, labor, and academic pursuits all rest on new students getting a solid educational foundation from which they can pursue careers. If we're more focused on people who already have established careers, then we're doing an enormous disservice to those students and, ultimately, the country itself.

I can't believe it's even a question that has to be asked in this day and age.
Do we expect firefighters to also solve crimes in their spare time?
Is your manager also expected to be a therapist?
Do you want your doctor to teach yoga on the side?

Or wouldn't it just be nice if all those people could pay attention to their job without having to worry about the safety of their career relying on a separate and completely unrelated job?
Wouldn't it be great if their attention wasn't split between training our future workforce and writing for academic journals?

But hey, I'm no teacher, I'm no professor, and I don't have tenure.
This is 100% from the biased perspective of a recent student who hasn't experienced education from the other side.
I might be completely off. I know I'm friends with a few teachers/professors, what do you think?

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Wad