An Unemployed University?

Imagine what would happen if all of us had a sudden, fair and accurate job evaluation. It wouldn’t look at qualifications or past performance, just are you doing what you’re supposed to be doing. And are you doing it well. A positive evaluation (say C+ or better) would allow you to keep your job. A lower mark would require immediate retraining and a failure would result in your termination. Would you still have a job?

Or more importantly, would any of your colleagues still have a job? (Since anyone reading this is, of course, the perfect employee.) I’m frustrated with teachers who don’t teach or seem to want to. I have a friend who recently complained that students taking his graduate course, a course he specializes in, were “horrible”. Ah, it must be the lack of preparation; the poor standards set while they were undergrads; the rotten teachers from years before; the third and fourth year classes that failed to challenge, prepare or accurately familiarize them with the material…Except for the fact that he was their professor for those preparatory classes. His field of specialization is unique enough that only he could have taught them, or failed to teach them, the relevant material.

Another colleague rarely uses English to talk to majors or graduate students in the subject. Imagine two people trained in the field of English talking about a paper written in English that outlines problems with teaching students how to use spoken English effectively only the whole conversation is taking place in some other language.

And of course there are stories of PhDs bought through the internet, sold A’s, sexual harassment, non existent office hours, fifteen minute class sessions and so on.

In all fairness, there are those I work with who are still interested in helping students learn. There is my boss; an underpaid, overworked mother of three, underdog opponent of the Indian boy’s club. And the one who works for free since the gov’t decided that they’d been mistakenly paying her an extra couple of dollars a month for the last couple of years. And the graduate students who would love to think for themselves but know that if they challenge their professors too much, they might not get the grades needed to go for their PhDs elsewhere. These, along with the students so desparate to learn, are why I am able to continue teaching.

I accept that I may not have the credentials of some of the staff I work with but I do actually love teaching. I enjoy having students come to me to discuss what they’re learning and interested in. I love showing them that it is ok to have original ideas. And that it’s even ok to change those ideas. I suppose that since I’ve only been teaching a few years, I shouldn’t be so critical about those who may have burned out. But I’d like to think that when I do burn out, I’d have the grace to allow myself to be replaced rather than hold on to a profession I should be fired from.