Staff without a degree in the subject they teach

[AwenYrGorffennol]

Hello HE people, I would like some sense of whether this is acceptable practice, either for staff or students.

I'm talking about a joint-honours, BA degree, let's say history and politics. Teaching staff who are qualified in one of the areas of the degree (eg politics) and usually teach/research in that area are delivering lectures for modules in history. It seems that they don't have as much as an A level in history, certainly not a degree. They are reading a script which has been written by someone with history expertise, and then overseeing seminars on the same module by relying on exercises and notes prepared by the person who wrote the lectures.

This is happening with the full approval of senior staff within the department and the university.

As standard practice or filling in for sickness or vacancy currently being recruited for?

AS pp says, very normal in HE.

I don't have a degree in the subject I teach (a very niche and specific task within a broader subject, my professional qualification is somewhat adjacent to that subject, but not a degree).

I do that task every damn day in my main job, and the students that I teach to do it will do it for an OSCE and then some will never have to do it again, others might do it once in a blue moon.

This is standard practice within the department and will continue for the foreseeable future across a range of modules. There's no plan to recruit anyone with a degree in the subject.

It's not ideal but given the cuts in the sector I'm not surprised. When I was more junior I was given modules in my overall subject but nowhere near my discipline, in many ways it was good practice as a lecturer to have to get your head around the content and deliver it successfully. I'm more experienced now and so have learnt to say no to such requests and have learnt with a new department or course to quickly ringfence my own modules or create new ones that stick to my expertise.

In HE I wouldn’t assume that lack of a degree in a subject means lack of expertise. Academic careers are long and take in all sorts of things- someone might have studied eg a BA in history 30 years ago but as a result of their work over the following 30 years are now the world’s expert in a particular niche area of politics or history of art or literature. Their old undergrad degree is neither here nor there and certainly doesn’t mean they don’t have the expertise to teach the course.

It’s also standard for staff to teach from a basic lecture plan worked out by someone else. Again it doesn’t mean they don’t have the expertise to teach the course, only that it would be a huge waste of time for teaching staff to redesign the course every year.

Do you actually think they lack the expertise to teach you? If so, that’s definitely a concern but the examples you’ve given don’t in themselves show it’s the case.

I recently had a module delivered by a tutor who is just doing their masters in a related subject, while waiting for a very experienced lecturer to start at the uni. And actually, it was fantastic! They were more engaged and helpful than some of my other subject tutors who had been teaching the same things for years. The whole class wanted them to carry on teaching us this term too but we have the new person now.

I guess you need to ask yourself what is actually being taught in a university. Do we impart facts or coach people how to learn and think? In which case, as long as you have a bit of an understanding of the field, you should be able to deliver anything!

Thanks for the replies. @ChocolateMagnum , this was my reaction.

Staff teaching modules in a discipline in which they don't have any degree or academic background don't have the context, the methodology, the mindset or the wider understanding that a degree gives you, even if they have some notes written by someone who does. Teaching on a science degree module for example should be about teaching someone to think like a scientist, not just presenting them with a collection of scientific facts to be learnt. And this needs the teacher to think like a scientist and to be appropriately qualified. (Actually, re-reading your comment perhaps you're saying the opposite, in which case I disagree with you!)

I think even at A level staff are required to have some qualification in a subject before they can teach it.

In HE all sorts of under qualified people teach things they don't know enough about. There are historical reasons for subject silos that are inappropriate and academics address subject areas in which they are not trained because of a (perfectly reasonable) wish to expand the frontiers of that artificial silo.

It happens a lot, DH had to teach a module that he was not an expert in once, I gave him a text book as I had taken a module in economics when at University. That was years ago at the University we both worked at when we first met so about 30 years ago? He was a post doc researcher at that point.

Expect more of this as HE is haemorrhaging experienced staff. I personally know 6 who have taken voluntary severance within the last couple of years. All of them had at least 30 years experience.

The general public have no idea how Universities run, some of them were like fiefdoms, no accountability. The one things Universities are excellent at is covering stuff up, doing things how they want. We retired recently. We started working towards the end of the golden era of HE. One that I worked at spent massive amounts of money on entertaining, it was shocking really. Those days are gone now.

BTW A level teachers absolutely don't need to be qualified in, or to even have ever studied a subject to teach it. And in many cases, not all though, this is just fine, an excellent RS teacher will still be excellent teaching sociology for example.

It really depends. Earning a PhD teaches one how to learn independently and deeply and, in many fields, how to create new knowledge. Someone with a PhD in Politics ought to be able to learn History to the point where they can not only read someone else’s lecture notes but analyse them, create debating points from them, etc. This would be fine.

However, that is in an ideal world as teaching a new discipline is invariably more time consuming than average. Is the lecturer provided with the necessary time? I wouldn’t bet on it.

And this approach goes only so far. In a mythical degree on Politics and Medicine, I am not sure the Politics lecturer could reasonably be expected acquire the depth of knowledge to lead on the Medical aspects of a module.

So it is tricky.

I think teaching related subjects is fine. Politics and History would be acceptable.

I teach a variety of subjects at GCSE and A Level but have a PhD in a very narrow field that crosses over a couple of these subjects but not all those that I am happy to teach. I was however a bit bemused when someone insisted I could teach A level philosophy 'because I had a doctorate in it'!

The skillset for those two subjects is the same. I'd be astonished if a lecturer with a PhD (not sure why you keep taking about Bachelors) in History couldn't teach Politics as well. In which case this should be perfectly ok - remember HE isn't imparting facts or even context - that's A level. Uni level teaches critical analysis of those facts and context.

Op I agree, at a degree level someone should have experience of doing Degree.

However it's very common in FE and HE for people to have no actual academic qualifications.
Strange isn't it!
I would just ask at open days, are the teachers qualified? And to what level.
Yes you can of course get natural teachers who are brilliant and may communicate a subject better than a proper teacher however, they probably won't have any pedagogy.

I’d be a bit aghast in someone with a degree in history teaching biology or maths but politics, nope, can’t see anything wrong in that. Such a lot of crossover.

My husband’s degree is classical music & he now teaches theatre.

We don't have teachers in HE

And you're going to have to give us a source for your assertion that LECTURERS often have no qualifications because it's bullshit.

@titchy sorry fe but I had assumed in he people had teaching quals??

Common in the humanities. Always has been. 30 years ago I specialised in a theoretical PhD but taught the first year British politics module without detailed current knowledge - I just learnt it as I taught.

I don't see any issues with someone with a history degree teaching a politics module and vice versa. They're overlapping fields and academic careers can diverge significantly from the initial degree subject.

DH and I are both academics with physics degrees. I teach a financial mathematics subject and he works in a biological sciences centre in cancer research. Our degrees were a long time ago and just the first stepping stone in our careers.

university funding & status is often linked to lecturer qualifications.

lecturers will not only have degrees but usually postgrad qualifications too.

they won’t have traditional teacher training qualifications as that’s not applicable to higher education.

Most in both FE and HE have appropriate teaching quals. Why do you think uni lecturers wouldn't?

In FE you do not.
You just said they arnt teachers.

they won’t have traditional teacher training qualifications as that’s not applicable to higher education

Most will be qualified through Advance HE

We're talking about HE - in HE you have lecturers not teachers. And they will be suitably qualified - though AHE and having PhDs in most cases, professional experience and PG quals in more vocation areas.