Back in high school, I used to think that university would be educational paradise, thaught by subject experts. And although I genuinely enjoy learning from my professors, I’ve been a bit let down by the differences in teaching skills of my professors.
This is not the professors’ fault. As students, we want to learn from experts of their fields. However, we also want those experts to be great teachers. This is where the Dutch higher educational system has some misaligned incentives.
Take the VU for example. Professors are evaluated primarily on their research output, where the quality and quantity of their research determines how much time they ‘earn’ to do research, with educational and administrative hours filling up the rest of their contracted hours. Essentially, teaching becomes a mandatory nuisance; a task to complete rather than a priority.
Another issue is the lack of didactic training for university professors. Unlike secondary school teachers, who go through rigorous teaching programs to develop classroom skills, the path to becoming a university lecturer is entirely academic (and I do admire their academic experience!). However, this places the responsibility for teaching development largely on professors themselves. While I believe that they are all highly motivated, there are still professors with little didactic skills put in front of a 350 people + class. There is still a lot of room for improvement. Perhaps it’s time to rethink the teaching training they receive.
Loosening some constraints on university teaching might also help. Many general introductory courses—like academic skills, statistics, or calculus—don’t necessarily require a world-renowned researchers. I’ve had the privilege of learning calculus from a rare professor who had a full-time teaching role (and was nominated for the best teacher award). Prioritizing teaching quality in 101 courses can make a difference: maybe not all courses need to be taught by field experts, but by expert teachers instead.
Finally, the feedback loop for teaching is completely broken. There was a time when students had to fill out paper evaluations directly after their exams, rating the course, the professor, and the exam itself. While this wasn’t perfect, the response rate was consistently above 90%. Now, with the online evaluation system ‘evalytics’, response rates have plummeted to under 8% —sometimes with fewer than five students providing feedback for an entire course. This shift to online has crippled feedback mechanisms for professors, but also for the oversight boards like the OLC, which are supposed to monitor educational quality.
Without proper feedback or external incentives, professors might do “just enough” to avoid being flagged by the broken system and continue their research. Luckily, many of my professors are intrinsically motivated. However, relying on their goodwill is not sustainable. Hopefully we can align intrests and incentives, benifiting both the students and the educators.
