# Why aren't collega professors taught to teach? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [June 24, 2005, 3:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-arent-collega-professors-taught-to-teach/309625 "2005-06-24T03:52:55Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 12\ **Page:** 5
**Author:** ![Sir\_Doris](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/b5ac83/32.png) [@Sir\_Doris](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sir_Doris)\ **Post date:** [June 27, 2005, 10:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-arent-collega-professors-taught-to-teach/309625/81 "2005-06-27T10:43:53Z")
> [@Axel](#): > > correct me if I’m wrong on this: from soon (next year I think), all college lecturers in the UK (only really high-level lecturers get to be called ‘Professor’) will have to have a teaching qualification. This would be a PGCE (post-graduate certificate in education) or equivalent I’m not sure about this - possibly for new lecturing staff. My current employers haven’t made any noises about us all having to train. My soon-to-be employers have a policy of all new (to them) lecturing staff having to get a PGCert. Whether this is in response to some DfES requirement, or their own policy, I don’t know. They seemed pretty apologetic about it being a requirement (since I don’t already have one I can only be offered a probationary period in the first instance) > [@Axel](#): > > Some untrained lecturers can be great. All trained lecturers will at least be good. That’s something to aim for, IMHO. The training could or should help and is unlikely to be doing any harm, but I don’t think it will necessarily turn out good lecturers any more than having a PGCE automatically means the person is a good teacher. ---
**Author:** ![GorillaMan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/50afbb/32.png) [@GorillaMan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GorillaMan)\ **Post date:** [June 27, 2005, 12:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-arent-collega-professors-taught-to-teach/309625/82 "2005-06-27T12:39:47Z")
Another thought about why it’s unlikely that all new lecturing staff are being required to have PGCEs - it would made recruitment of foreign staff virtually impossible. ---
**Author:** ![Cardinal](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cardinal/32/4000_2.png) [@Cardinal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cardinal)\ **Post date:** [June 27, 2005, 6:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-arent-collega-professors-taught-to-teach/309625/83 "2005-06-27T18:03:36Z")
> [@Colibri](#): > > A fundamental problem is that most universities have two different missions - teaching and research - that are not entirely compatible. Few people are really good at both, or have time to be even adequate at both. Universities should have a separate cadre of profs whose only mission is to teach undergraduates. Researchers, on the other hand would generally only take on advanced graduate students. My dad went to MIT, and this was his major complaint. The profs seemed to regard the undergrads as a nuisance. His concern when we got old enough for college was not to go to one that had “publish or perish”. ---
**Author:** ![micco](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/5f8ce5/32.png) [@micco](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/micco)\ **Post date:** [June 27, 2005, 6:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-arent-collega-professors-taught-to-teach/309625/84 "2005-06-27T18:33:32Z")
> [@Cardinal](#): > > My dad went to MIT, and this was his major complaint. The profs seemed to regard the undergrads as a nuisance. His concern when we got old enough for college was not to go to one that had “publish or perish”. There’s an old saying: _Those that can, do. Those that can’t, teach_. I don’t mean to insult teachers and there are plenty of cases where people both “do” and “teach” well, but the fact remains that if you want to do something well, you’re better off learning from those who do those things well. If you want to be a welder, would you study under a welder or a person with a teaching degree who had welded a few things? If you wanted to be a mechanic, would you study under a mechanic or a person with a teaching degree who tinkered with his car now and then? If you want to be a researcher, would you study under someone who did world-class peer-reviewed research or a person with a teaching degree who had some passing familiarity with the field you were interested in? Whatever your (and my) criticisms of self-involved egotistical professors, the fact is that if you want to do what they do (research, not bad teaching) you’re better off studying under them than in some ideal learning environment taught by people less involved in the field. ---
**Author:** ![micco](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/5f8ce5/32.png) [@micco](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/micco)\ **Post date:** [June 27, 2005, 6:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-arent-collega-professors-taught-to-teach/309625/85 "2005-06-27T18:49:35Z")
> [@Herdin](#): > > [ul] > [li]Talking into the blackboard as he is writing[/li][li]The writing itself is illegible (hint: if you can’t read it yourself you can’t expect your students to)[/li][/ul] I had one professor who would write on the blackboard with his right hand and surreptitiously correct errors with his left while his body was blocking the board. If you paid attention to his words and writing, you never caught the corrections. If you noticed a logical inconsistency and asked about it, the blackboard had been corrected and it looked like your error, not his. Quite a putz. Still, I learned a great deal from him because he had literally written the book on the field he was lecturing on and no one could have conveyed the knowledge better. Granted, he could have done a lot better than he did, but no one else could have done as well regardless of teaching technique. ---
**Author:** ![Acsenray](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/acsenray/32/4519_2.png) [@Acsenray](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Acsenray)\ **Post date:** [June 27, 2005, 7:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-arent-collega-professors-taught-to-teach/309625/86 "2005-06-27T19:41:47Z")
> [@micco](#): > > I had one professor who would write on the blackboard with his right hand and surreptitiously correct errors with his left while his body was blocking the board. If you paid attention to his words and writing, you never caught the corrections. If you noticed a logical inconsistency and asked about it, the blackboard had been corrected and it looked like your error, not his. How did he avoid tell-tale smudges? ---
**Author:** ![drhess](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/94ad74/32.png) [@drhess](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/drhess)\ **Post date:** [June 27, 2005, 8:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-arent-collega-professors-taught-to-teach/309625/87 "2005-06-27T20:26:58Z")
> [@mhendo](#): > > Well, as someone who’s in the process of getting a PhD, with a view to becoming a college professor, i must admit that the absence of teacher training is something that i think about from time to time. To tell you the truth, i think that there are plenty of college professors who would benefit from some formal training in education and pedagogy. I’m in a similar situation and agree entirely that there are plenty of professors that would benefit from training in the psychology and practice of education. It is amazing to me the number of professors I encounter who don’t even understand some basic notions of cognitive psychology. (See “What’s the Use of Lectures” by Bligh for a fun review of this material.) {I’ve noticed that courses I have taken, and texts that I have read, on statistics and experimental design taught or written by psychology profs are far better than those by others. I mentioned this to two faculty here and they reflected that that was also their experience even though they hadn’t noticed that before. } As I prepare to teach my first undergraduate course, I’m finding that the preparation is making me master some material that I could have avoided and I suspect the students will ask some questions that will send me back to the library to look for the answer. There is a market for books on learning how to teach at the college level, so presumably some people are buying this books up. Most large schools also have a center for instructional design that faculty are to take advantage of. It would be nice to require phd students who wish to teach to take a class or two or a class and a practicum with group reflection on teaching and on the history of colleges/universities in their nation or the world. The notion that college students are just to learn on their own is absurd. Just as it is absurd if you are teaching/training people who are middle-aged adults. The teacher had better be able to impart information that is not in the text, help integrate/critique/analyze what is in the text and, most importantly!, help students with learning to freaking write. (The lack of skills among professors in teaching students to write well is really, really sad. The pace at which profs are often expected to publish and read/comment (the so-called “service” work) seems to lead to some pretty nasty writing habits.) Universities should also require continual reflection on teaching by having a required seminar for professors every few years. I think my college did this over some summers. Profs (or some fraction of them) were given some things to read on teaching, trends in college in society, history of higher education, etc. and had a set of seminar like meetings with the Dean to discuss the readings. I was told recently that faculty evaluations at research schools tend to place research/publication as 80 percent of the evaluation, teaching as 10-15 percent and “service” (participating in refereeing journals, writing book reviews, etc.) work as another 5-10 percent. There are people who could do a better job of teaching than what we have and still do excellent research but just not prodigious amounts of it (since teaching is time intensive). Unfortunately, I think the current system keeps many of them out or in a stressful situation, thus some of the best teachers are often adjuncts (enthusasiam for teaching is again the key)! ---
**Author:** ![micco](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/5f8ce5/32.png) [@micco](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/micco)\ **Post date:** [June 27, 2005, 8:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-arent-collega-professors-taught-to-teach/309625/88 "2005-06-27T20:27:42Z")
> [@acsenray](#): > > How did he avoid tell-tale smudges? He didn’t, and of course the chalk-covered left hand was a big hint too. But unless you took time to look back and check for smudges or watched his body motion to see when he was doing it, you never really noticed. He lectured at a pretty fast pace and it was a pretty interactive discussion class, so you didn’t have time to keep re-reading the board for changes. And if you mentioned an error in your notes and he pointed out where it was correct on the board, what would you do, accuse him of editing the board based on smudges? Hardly worth a confrontation. It was just one of those things that was pretty obvious to every student after a few lectures and we just dealt with it. ---
**Author:** ![furt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/439d5e/32.png) [@furt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/furt)\ **Post date:** [June 27, 2005, 11:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-arent-collega-professors-taught-to-teach/309625/89 "2005-06-27T23:24:23Z")
> [@Q.N. Jones](#): > > Umm…you do? Why not just keep them the same and have all the kids who can’t or won’t hack it just flunk out? > > Oh, right, colleges want the revenue. But the higher numbers of people going to college aren’t a good enough reason on their own to lower standards. According to administrators, yes they are. You think schools are going to accept a significant drop in enrollment (with the concomitant loss of revenue leading to loss of jobs, etc.) just because “we couldn’t find enough students up to our standards?” Not on your life. The schools grow bigger and bigger every year, but as with Lake Woebegon, all the children are still above average. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Hook](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/ccd318/32.png) [@The\_Hook](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Hook)\ **Post date:** [June 28, 2005, 1:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-arent-collega-professors-taught-to-teach/309625/90 "2005-06-28T01:39:48Z")
> [@furt](#): > > According to administrators, yes they are. You think schools are going to accept a significant drop in enrollment (with the concomitant loss of revenue leading to loss of jobs, etc.) just because “we couldn’t find enough students up to our standards?” Not on your life. One thing is to accept everyone and another is to let everyone pass. Just because a student is in doesn’t mean he should have it easy (or, better put: mediocre). ---
**Author:** ![Cardinal](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cardinal/32/4000_2.png) [@Cardinal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cardinal)\ **Post date:** [June 28, 2005, 2:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-arent-collega-professors-taught-to-teach/309625/91 "2005-06-28T02:39:14Z")
My buddy who got his Masters in chem at USC told me his theory was that USC was accepting students sometimes based on demographics instead of ability. The fact that the pass rate for these students wasn’t very good was beside the point, because while they were enrolled, they bouyed the diversity numbers. ---
**Author:** ![drhess](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/94ad74/32.png) [@drhess](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/drhess)\ **Post date:** [June 28, 2005, 3:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-arent-collega-professors-taught-to-teach/309625/92 "2005-06-28T15:30:03Z")
> [@Cardinal](#): > > My buddy who got his Masters in chem at USC told me his theory was that USC was accepting students sometimes based on demographics instead of ability. The fact that the pass rate for these students wasn’t very good was beside the point, because while they were enrolled, they bouyed the diversity numbers. Is that surprising? Schools have reasons for wanting diversity that are virtuous (e.g., exposing students to diversity) beyond the appearance or oversight reasons. (Sorry, I guess were’re getting off topic and off into GD here.) [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-arent-collega-professors-taught-to-teach/309625.md?page=4)