I work in academia, and have also worked in private industry. One of the largest problems with academia is that there is no easily quantifiable metric of succe

I work in academia, and have also worked in private industry. One of the largest problems with academia is that there is no easily quantifiable metric of success. In the private world a good indicator that you're doing something right is that you're making money. In state schools this is complicated further because budgets are based on something entirely independent of performance. For example the state school I work at has the highest enrollment ever, and our 6 year graduation rate is up, but this is going to be the worst year yet for budgets in a while. There simply exists no reward/punishment system that encourages good behavior and discourages bad. Even tenure works the opposite of its intended effect: the value of life long job security is inversely proportional to how valuable you think your skills are to other people (if you're top in the world any org you work for should be begging to keep you, if you think you're the bottom of the barrel you'll fight tooth and nail to earn virtually permanent employment). The only exception to this is research, where grants can serve as a good reward system, unfortunately this only creates a further imbalance in that research is rewarded but teaching is not. In short incentives in higher ed are random, if not flat out reversed. The only motivator for good educators is personal passion.