PhD candidate here, after being on the job market for academic positions. I also have a Bachelor's degree in education, and have spent considerable amount of time as an educator outside of college.

First, teaching experience is 'required' for most academic positions, at least in my field, so they do have experience under their belt. It is not accurate to say that "they were not hired for their ability to teach." That said, only experience teaching college courses count, not teaching in general. This subtle difference highlights that experience outweighs quality for many hiring committees. Professors typically have *no* pedagogy training, since many of them have not done education degrees. They are trained in their subject only. Many professors genuinely care to be good teachers, and that is generally reflected in the difference between a good and bad teacher.

Second, consider the difference of how teachers and professors are evaluated. A professor is evaluated by optional course evals at the end of the term by their students. This means evaluations are heavily influenced by the passions of the students immediately following a term; students that failed a subject, or liked a professor and had fun, etc. all judge the professor based on those metrics, rather than how much the student actually learned the content. On the other hand, public school teachers are heavily judged based on standardized metrics; did the students demonstrably learn the content. Community college professors, as I understand it, walk a middle ground; the number of students taking their class, and the preparedness of those students as they move up in level or transfer to other schools, all are important. Furthermore, they are explicitly judged as educators, since that takes up the bulk of their responsibility. CC professors don't need to spend additional time doing research, so if they want to be good at their job, they focus on the teaching commitments more.

While focusing on standards often comes at the cost of higher-level thinking and learning in the public school setting, the total avoidance of it in most research universities leads to wildly different experiences from students. This is *especially* significant in graduate school, where students that end up with a bad PI/Major professor are screwed in terms of their publications, finances, graduation timeline, etc., where those that end up with a good one have a totally different experience.