[ANPPOM-Lista] G. Huxley: Why is no one defending teaching at our universities?

[Carlos Palombini]

 Why is no one defending teaching at our universities? Your undergraduate
experience depends upon the quality of teaching staff - yet universities
continue to put research first, argues Gervas Huxley.
  [image: University teaching: it’s time for both Parliament and the public
to address the quality of teaching at our universities.]
 University teaching: it’s time for both Parliament and the public to
address the quality of teaching at our universities.  Photo: OJO Images Ltd
/ Alamy

By Gervas Huxley

7:00AM GMT 12 Dec 2012

Much as we wish it weren’t so, Christmas shopping really boils down to one
simple rule – the more you spend, the more you end up with under your tree.

The same does not seem to apply to our university system. Students are
typically taught in tutorials of 15 or more students these days, whilst
their parents (if they went to university) studied in classes less than
half this size and of course paid no fee.

How can this be fair? For all the talk about market forces and value for
money supposedly reshaping our university system, it doesn’t take an
Economics lecturer to see there’s something amiss.

And yet when do we ever hear concerns about the quality of teaching?
Rarely, if at all.

As it happens I am an Economics lecturer. More specifically, I am a
Teaching Fellow at the University of Bristol. This means I am paid to
teach, and only to teach.

I mention this because the status of my profession gives a good insight
into the esteem in which teaching is held in academia. As the balance
between teaching and research has shifted decisively in favour of research,
not just in this country but around the world, the emphasis on research in
Russell Group universities means that the role of teaching is increasingly
neglected.

And it's not just the universities – almost any academic you’ll find
speaking about our university system in the Houses of Parliament or in a
national newspaper will be there because of their research.

I’ve been asked to give evidence at the House of Lords this week on the
state of higher education teaching – and invited to write this blog –
because of* a lecture voted for by my
students<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0wjIcb-TLhA>
*which appeared online last year. But this is highly unusual.

This lack of emphasis on teaching is one of the major problems facing our
higher education system. The quality of education received by
undergraduates relies increasingly on what teaching staff like myself have
to offer, but far too little is known about our role.

Nowhere is this clearer than in the near-total absence of discussion about
class size. If increasing class size was the inevitable consequence of
falling funding per student for almost two decades from 1979 until 1998 –
when students began to pay fees of £1,000 – shouldn’t students be seeing a
benefit from the successive increases in the fee since 1998?

So far there’s been no sign of this happening. It’s time for both
Parliament and the public to address the quality of teaching at our
universities.

And it’s time that those of us in academia whose main concern is teaching
began contributing to this debate.

*Gervas Huxley is* *a Teaching Fellow at the University of Bristol and
consults on Higher Education policy. *

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/educationopinion/9737565/Why-is-no-one-defending-teaching-at-our-universities.html

http://youtu.be/0wjIcb-TLhA

-- 
carlos palombini
www.researcherid.com/rid/F-7345-2011
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