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.

The difference between politics and history is about two decades (or less). I don't see an issue with a competent lecturer with a politics degree teaching a history module in a combined history and politics programme.

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

There's usually a preference but no requirement
Teachers having to teach well outside their expertise thanks to poor recruitment

This is common within HE.

Acquiring a degree, a PhD and further post-doctoral research experience are not just about giving you subject knowledge, but proving your capacity to learn independently.

Someone who has a PhD and several years experience should be capable of teaching themselves material to undergraduate level, not just repeating what they've been taught as an undergraduate themselves (which may well be out of date by the time they are teaching it anyhow).

Remember university lecturing is not the same as teaching. You "read" your degree subject you are not "taught" a degree. Your lecturers need to be capable of showing you how to learn and research independently, rather than supplying a set of notes that you repeat in the exam hall.

Reading for a degree is not the same skill as learning for GCSE or A'levels.

In the past there was an expectation that school staff would only be teaching subjects they had higher level qualifications in.
But this isn't the case anymore. School teachers frequently teach subjects they don't have knowledge about.
The idea is that they can use pre made resources, research topic before class etc.

Even with languages some teachers are learning as the go

I work in healthcare education. I teach some subjects that I am not familiar with. I have a lesson plan and a mentor if I need. Also lots of notes to read for background knowledge.

But I won’t teach a subject that was not related to my skill base.

Half CS professors in Cambridge don't have CS degree.

And those that do will find it totally useless given how the subject has changed since they were undergrads!

History and politics are such a similar skill set I can’t see the issue. 🤷🏻‍♀️. Especially if someone with the subject knowledge has prepped the material.

I used to be a nursing lecturer and I’m not a nurse. Worst year of my life 🙈😆. The focus of my module was about professional issues and I am an allied healthcare practitioner but sometimes I’d be marking an assignment and they’d have based it on something like wound care and I just used to hope the nursing bit was correct!

Most people working at the highest levels of software development don't have CS degrees! I'm not sure what people with CS degrees do, because I have worked with two very successful developer companies and between them they don't have a CS degree on the Org Chart. It's a degree with a well below average employment rate.

Actually everyone I know in a CS position at Google, Microsoft or Amazon and everyone I know in Cybersecurity at banks and credit card companies does have a degree in CS or some flavour of Mathematics, often a PhD.

These people may not be ‘at the very top’ of those huge companies but their median remuneration is easily 7 figures so I think they count as successful.

The value of a CS degree is not in learning particulars, it is in learning first principles. This is why mathematicians take to computers so easily.

Graduates of good CS programmes are highly employable!

If only learning first principles were more widespread across academia!

And this needs the teacher to think like a scientist and to be appropriately qualified.

Academics are not "teachers." I teach (and lead) in a department/discipline for which I have no degree. My training at PhD level and early teaching experience readied me to teach anything in a very broad subject area, of which my current department is one small part. I could give a lecture tomorrow on any given topic in that area, because I have a wealth of broad knowledge, and I'm trained in critical thinking.

Knowledge is not handed out in silos.

And there's a difference between teaching & learning. I'm sometimes a better teacher in the way I encourage enable & facilitate student learning if I'm teaching something I'm not an expert in. My questions are more open for a start, because I'm less dogmatic about my expertise.

Academics are not "teachers." I teach (and lead) in a department

Yes, my apologies here, @LittleBigHead , no offence intended. I meant teacher in the sense of one who teaches, but I can see it could be misconstrued.

With respect OP, this isn't really how university teaching/research works. Many many academics end up with posts in departments for which - going by the title of their department - they might not necessarily have a degree with that word in the title. For example, it wouldn't be at all unusual for a specialist in artificial intelligence to have an academic role in a Department of Psychology. Or for someone who did their PhD in a Politics department somewhere to get a job in a History department. There are crossovers and collaborations, and very few academic disciplines are entirely discrete entities, where everyone is confined wholly in one restricted field.

Psychology is a particularly promiscuous field! I know of shitloads in a local department who have degrees and PhDs in a vast range of different disciplines. It's only for the good, IMO. A bit of cross-pollination and different perspectives makes for a far better academic environment.

A psychologist just won the Nobel Prize for Physics, too.