ABSTRACT
Ernest Boyer (1990, p. 43) We have seen how academic productivity is associated with the processes of academic work. The outcomes of higher education seem to be highly variable within systems and across departments as well as between individual staff. At the same time, variation in quality between academic work units is remarkably stable from one year to the next. Excellence tends to be concentrated rather than dispersed. Whatever the reason for this, it is not mainly an effect of redistribution of funds due to relatively recent accountability processes. Where good teaching occurs, it is closely related to high quality student learning and desirable graduate outcomes, both academic and vocational. High levels of research activity, themselves linked to intrinsic interest in research and an early commitment to a research career, as well as to the department in which an individual staff member is employed, are associated with greater academic productivity. Other scholarly and service outcomes are almost certainly influenced in the same way.
