I guess I’m glad I became aware of the bias, before finishing my doctorate.

My undergrad totally did the pretend it’s about students when it’s about grants thing. The prof in my department who won the student favorite award every year for doing things like holding extra office hours, study sessions, and actually teaching didn’t get tenure, because he was only publishing one or two papers a year. In a massive move of cluelessness, two weeks later they put out a survey asking students how to improve their educational experience.

On a related note:
In my department, we bring two big-name speakers each year as part of an endowed lecture series. This year’s speaker was here over the weekend, and as I was looking over the brochure listing the speakers over the past 25 years, I noticed something interesting: out of nearly 50 speakers, there were only 2 women – and both of these women were co-speakers who had come with their more-famous husbands.

Worse, I wasn’t here for the first man/woman pair, but I was for the second. Their lectures were far from impressive, but most of the other grad students (especially the men, natch) ripped into the woman far more than the man – because she’d had a hot flash during her talk, which was distracting to her as well as the audience. So she was automatically disqualified, because she had the audacity to be a menopausal woman. Sigh.

SLAC: Small Liberal Arts College (like where baraqiel did her undergrad)

R-1: Research 1 Institution. (I would guess like where baraqiel is now) Big, with multiple colleges/schools, but with a greatest focus on funding and doing research. Lots of big land-grant schools have evolved into R-1s, but there are also some prestigious brand-name schools. R-2s would be focused on research, too, but they’re not as high-profile.

@Dorkie: What are SLACs and R-1s?

You are so right. It’s the possibility of influencing a life, or even just being respectful and friendly to undergrads, that is what people remember from college. Research is great stuff (hell, I’m doing some for pay at the mo, although not at a university), but it doesn’t have the direct impact that a relationship between teacher and student can have. If I were in school, I’d pick someone like you, Dorkie, over some remote, self-impressed jerk with a ton of meaningless publications on his CV.

ETA: Not all faculty think of undergrads as a unfortunate flaw of the system. I love teaching more than anything else. Even when it sucks and drains me, I know it matters. I don’t flatter myself that I’ll mystically, permanently touch all (or even most) of my students, but I know that I can make a difference in their lives. And it’s not by lecturing about my latest research project.