Are You Qualified to Teach Me?

I graduated from the University of Arizona, which at that time, was one of the top 10 schools of accounting.  I'm not sure how that was measured, or who did the measuring, but that's what we were told by all the recruiters from the large accounting firms.

I was flown to Anchorage from Tucson by three of the "Big 8."  I accepted the offer from Price Waterhouse (now merged with Coopers).  The first 6 months I didn't do much more than work on audits of various entities.  I reconciled bank accounts and reviewed payroll, and most of my days were spent on a 10-key calculator.

The sad part was that at no time during my education at one of America's "top accounting schools" had I ever touched a 10-key calculator.  That's because not one of my professors had ever actually worked in the accounting profession.

I took accounting courses from people who had never seen a "set of books."  I took marketing courses from people who had never sold anything.  And I took management courses from people who had never been responsible for running any organization.

In order for the US to remain competive in a global economy, we have to make sure our college faculties not only understand subjects well enough to teach the theories to others (often a stretch!), but why they are teaching them and how they can be applied by students after graduating and joining the workforce.  Simpy earning a PhD (to become a tenure-track professor) doesn't meet any of these three requirements.

Over a 25-year period, I taught 15 undergraduate and 12 graduate courses at 5 universities.  In the second year of teaching, I was full-time faculty at the University of Alaska Anchorage.  I was pleased with my student evaluations; among the highest in the business college.  But I was told by the Dean, very explicitly in fact, that student evaluations were "meaningless;" the only measure of success in the academic environment was "research and publishing."  I told him the State could save a lot of money if they just kicked out the students so the rest of the faculty members could focus on their research and writing.  Unfortunately, many of my academic collegues viewed teaching as a necessary but distasteful distraction.  And it was evident in their attitudes toward students.

We also desperately need to change the current criteria for tenure at our universities.  Doctoral candidates who intend to make a career of serving on college faculties should be required to teach (and be evaluated by students) as part of their core curriculum to receive a PhD.

The primary responsibility of every teacher or professor should be to contribute to the productive education of students.  In virtually any other profession or career track, there are specific performance expectations; produce or be replaced.  Instructors who cannot effectively teach should be removed, whether K-12 or graduate school. 

The U.S. will not be globally competitive without a well-educated work force.  We are already far behind much smaller countries in virtually every academic measure at every grade level.  Jobs once sent overseas will eventually return to the US.  We will be the ones manufacturing cheap goods in sweat shops for the much-better educated, wealthier consumers in China, India and Brazil.