Publish or Perish

An article in the New York Times recently explored some aspects of the academic publishing system that you ought to be aware of as a student. At most research universities--either the big state schools or prestigious private ones--a junior faculty member has to come in and perform. You might have thought that performance would be measured in how well the professor taught, but that's not the case at all. Instead, new professors are largely evaluated on their publications. How many books and journal articles do they guide into print? How many papers do they read at prestigious scholarly conferences? Sure, if the professor goes in and drools all over the place in class, that doesn't bode well for their gaining tenure, but if the drooler manages to publish enough, then that might work out.
This article describes how Harvard is tinkering with some of the economic aspects of the current system. Notice that they're not trying to dismantle or even seriously reform the whole publish-or-perish mindset, but at least they're admitting that there are problems.
You can't change the mindset at your school. If you're at a community college or a so-called teaching college, then you should have professors for whom teaching is the main thing. Otherwise, you'll find that research leads the parade and teaching, while it might be good, follows behind the band. You can't change that, but you should know about it. Know what motivates your professor. You could try to change them, but more importantly you should endeavor to understand them.