I'm teaching faculty, so I don't do research. Research faculty are right to prioritize their research -- they are incentivized to do so by administration. Their tenure is predicated almost 100% on their research output and the grant money they bring in. Teaching ability is an afterthought when it comes to tenure and promotion. It doesn't make them bad people or bad at their job, it's just that their job isn't really teaching according to basically every signal sent their way by the admin.

I understand the incentives, but teaching is part of their job even if they need to do research, and from the student perspective they are bad professors. If all I needed was to learn it from the book/youtube/internet and take tests, there would be no need for professors and they wouldn't exist.

I've had professors that did more damage by 'teaching' (I use that term loosely) than if they had just said 'learn it from the book/online and show up for labs/tests/exams'. Mostly it was because they had no idea how teaching worked.

It's a very faculty-centric view because from a student's perspective, the teaching is 99% of the school. Very few will go on to research. They come to school to learn and earn a degree. If the University cannot provide good teachers, they are not a good university. If a professor cannot teach, they are not a good professor. That isn't a moral judgement, its just the subjective judgement from the other side of the school-desk.

Kinda disagree, doing a bad job of teaching isn't OK regardless of whether it's incentivized by your job. You have moral responsibilities too, like putting in a good effort for people who are relying on you.