Unfortunately, your question “How do I measure academic (college & university) contribution\production?” is now, in a lot of places, tied to publishing work.
There are a lot of people who have to push something out to get that checkbox. And a lot of things pushed out of people’s brains to satisfy this resemble something pushed out the other end of the body!
yeah I know I have worked in academia before.
Its done because its the easiest metric to colelct and the easiest for a lawyer to define when the inevitable bias law suit occurs.
Is it in anyway effective HELL NO!
I see the same thing in government & in industry for the same reasons.