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Who Suffers?

One of the curses of university life here seems to be that you can never just focus on your teaching more research. There always has to be some sort of contest or competition  which requires tons of paperwork, or there's a report to be written and documentation to be gathered. Careers seem to be built upon publication, called "research." True success in this requires time, lots of time, for reading. But even basic responsibility of class preparation makes it difficult or impossible to find enough time to read as much as you need for a truly successful research endeavor. Those who succeed seem to do so on the backs of their teaching assistants. I wonder who suffers in this case. The teaching assistants who are forced into so much extra work, or the students who must do without an experienced and highly motivated professor?
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