There’s supposed to be a growing opportunity in high school where you pick electives, getting closer to higher ed. And most unis have some prerequisites and each degree program has required and electives. So it is a transition. I think the bigger wall to cross is the one from structure of uni to working. Yes, there’s a lack of development of self-learning at every stage.

JonggyuBae, for those who may not know, TPCK is Technical, Pedagogical, and Content Knowledge. Basically saying academics need to know their domain, how to teach, and how to use tech. I agree it’d be useful for instructors to know. Unfortunately, as in my response to DUDave, it’s also hard to enforce, as most unis care more about research than teaching. Grants provide an overhead to the institution, and they like to cite the quality of their thought. I’ve always thought that the quality of uni teaching should be of concern to the reputation of the institution, but as yet that hasn’t mattered (it’s not like we really have viable alternatives, all that matters is how good a uni you get into; something other countries to better on, like Germany). There’s a lot of opportunity for improvement.

DUDave, my take on your comment is that the problem is top universities value publication and grant funding more than teaching. Even middle unis (really, teaching unis) try to hire and compete on those criteria. They might say they care about teaching, but it’s not obvious in practice. And they can’t force a prof to take a course on teaching. The best profs get money to buy out of teaching to focus on research, so they hire the adjuncts who you rightly point out are mistreated. And yet no one really checks their teaching either! Unless complaints are raised. It’s partly the pressure on unis to become more self-sustaining, and their growing bureaucracy. At least, that’s how I see it.

While I’m certain the goal is to ensure highly qualified individuals are guiding the programs (a goal that I agree with), I feel like the spirit of that law is hurt by the way people are hired. There are high-quality adjunct folks who will never get a look for those kind of jobs. Which I guess would be fine if there was more incentive to be an adjunct faculty member than there usually is.

I can think of some excellent profs. I had, but I can also recall ones who clearly had gone to school, didn’t know what to do, so they got another degree, didn’t know what to do and so they got another… and so on. And now they’re teaching college.

Pulling back for a broader view, this kind of change always feels like it’s legacy stuff that gets in the way. Just another case where common wisdom gets thrown out the window once we actually have to apply it to a human situation – in this case, “the most dangerous words in the language are ‘we’ve always done it this way.'”