Dear Editor,
Seeing the state that we are in, both as a nation and as a people, wouldn't it be fair to ask if our university lecturers have any work to do? I ask this because we see them doing what appears to be a lot of non-university (even non-educational) work.
If there are still people who doubt that we have a very serious intellectual deficit problem, then I would invite them to simply take a casual look at the state that we have been in for a very long time. Just to name two indicators — our national productivity has been declining now since the early 1970s and, judging from the state of our economy, our problem-solving skills leave much to be desired.
Now, we are always being told that, in many respects, our universities hold the key to a better future. We have been hearing this now for as long as I can remember. Yet our state of affairs continues to worsen. How then can our university educators find so much time for work not directly related to their jobs?
I fail to see how our universities can do more to materialise the enhancement of our intellectual capacity that we so desperately need when so many of them are being appointed to boards of all kinds, hosting talk shows, chairing committees, and even managing organisations.
If it is that their workloads are light, then that in itself should raise a red flag. The lack of any real ability of our leaders, most of whom are university graduates, to solve our problems as manifested by our economic mess, should have induced our universities to revise the job descriptions of these educators long ago.
Based on the state that we are in, I can understand politicians being able to host talk shows and the like, as they clearly have little to do. But I can't understand this of tertiary-level educators, as one would have thought that developing the intellectual capacity of people would have been no easy task. This is especially true in our case, where the art of problem solving is desperately underdeveloped.
If, on the other hand, these educators are very efficient at what they do, wouldn't it be better for them to use their free time to boost the problem-solving skills of their students?
One rarely sees engineers, like information technology professionals, farmers, doctors and other scientists having the luxury of so much free time like these educators, and yet we can see what they are doing.
I think that our universities owe it to us to take a good look at the workload of their educators. From where I stand, there is a wide gap between the apparent volume of work that they have, and the need to solve the severe problems that we have.
Michael A Dingwall
michael_a_dingwall@hotmail.com
Don't lecturers have work to do?
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Seeing the state that we are in, both as a nation and as a people, wouldn't it be fair to ask if our university lecturers have any work to do? I ask this because we see them doing what appears to be a lot of non-university (even non-educational) work.
If there are still people who doubt that we have a very serious intellectual deficit problem, then I would invite them to simply take a casual look at the state that we have been in for a very long time. Just to name two indicators — our national productivity has been declining now since the early 1970s and, judging from the state of our economy, our problem-solving skills leave much to be desired.
Now, we are always being told that, in many respects, our universities hold the key to a better future. We have been hearing this now for as long as I can remember. Yet our state of affairs continues to worsen. How then can our university educators find so much time for work not directly related to their jobs?
I fail to see how our universities can do more to materialise the enhancement of our intellectual capacity that we so desperately need when so many of them are being appointed to boards of all kinds, hosting talk shows, chairing committees, and even managing organisations.
If it is that their workloads are light, then that in itself should raise a red flag. The lack of any real ability of our leaders, most of whom are university graduates, to solve our problems as manifested by our economic mess, should have induced our universities to revise the job descriptions of these educators long ago.
Based on the state that we are in, I can understand politicians being able to host talk shows and the like, as they clearly have little to do. But I can't understand this of tertiary-level educators, as one would have thought that developing the intellectual capacity of people would have been no easy task. This is especially true in our case, where the art of problem solving is desperately underdeveloped.
If, on the other hand, these educators are very efficient at what they do, wouldn't it be better for them to use their free time to boost the problem-solving skills of their students?
One rarely sees engineers, like information technology professionals, farmers, doctors and other scientists having the luxury of so much free time like these educators, and yet we can see what they are doing.
I think that our universities owe it to us to take a good look at the workload of their educators. From where I stand, there is a wide gap between the apparent volume of work that they have, and the need to solve the severe problems that we have.
Michael A Dingwall
michael_a_dingwall@hotmail.com
Don't lecturers have work to do?
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