Yes, I mentioned this type of examples in the second half of my post. Thankfully these are becoming more common.
Except that UC Berkeley most definitely is “in the rat-race to be "top-tier research institution" (probably more accurately described as one of the rat-race winners in many fields) - it’s definitely important that top-tier research institutions also provide quality teaching.
We do agree on this. My second sentence is exactly what you just said:
> Thankfully, many universities (even the prestigious ones) are now starting to hire more semi-permanent teaching-focused staff (and some even use the title professor for these).
Not completely true. UC Berkeley at least has tenure-track lecturers, now apparently mostly referred to as "Teaching Professors" (https://apo.berkeley.edu/sites/default/files/teaching_profes...)
A random (old) job post for this: https://gsso.ce.gatech.edu/2022/01/12/tenure-track-teaching-...