Count

VW was in fact puzzled about the attitude of the university (and our government).

"Wouldn't it be of their interest to put more emphasis and reward those academic staff with excellent teaching ? From the government (i.e. money) point of view, there seems very little value for us to publish a few more papers."

But they need a yardstick. Publication and impact factor are easily measurable and you could do statistical analysis with a computer; there seems no good way to quantify the quality of teaching.

(By definition, it is impossible to quantify the quality of anything - otherwise the two words would be one.)

As KM loves to quote from Albert Einstein: Not everything that counts can be counted; not everything that can be counted counts.

I wonder if the great physicist was actually saying this to the dean of the faculty in Princeton during his staff appraisal.