The worst thing about lecturer is that it’s become aspirational. For an entire generation of teachers the next step on the career ladder is a title derived from talking. I mean, the word is fine, but the fact that it is a common title in academia indicts the entire antiquated, obsolete, bloated system. One in which the majority of the work is being done by people who benefit the least. Welcome to late-stage capitalism.
First, the word lecturer. It’s a derivative of legere, Latin word for to read. Only, before it was reading, it was gathering and collecting. Over time, that sense of gathering began to include information and from there broadened into discussing the collected and gathered information. Eventually, this broadened even further until the early 16th century when lecture went from reading to admonishing as per Etymonline.
As we’ve discussed recently, teacher and its related words are not quite keeping up with the times due to social, pedagogical, and, most importantly, bureaucratic changes. Lecturer is no different. Lecturer started as someone who was reading to an audience. Think of a preacher delivering a sermon or a teacher delivering a, uh, lecture. Over time, lecturer became codified into a title and rank.
By the 16th century, ‘lecture’ didn’t just mean to read. It meant to admonish.”
So, why then, is lecturer an outdated, pedagogically unsound word?
When I was in junior high school one of my teachers was trying to explain to us what college would be like. How we would be unable to have one-on-one time with teachers, how we’d just be one of 200 students crammed into an auditorium, how we’d be expected to listen to the professor, take our own notes, and learn the materials in order to pass the exams.
By the time I actually got to college, that system was already changing. Not only due to technology — why cram students into uncomfortable lecture halls when you could just have the teacher speak on camera — but because universities were beginning to understand just how much of a difference to a student’s grade some one-on-one time could make.
Our professors were required to have several hours of advisory time where they were available to students for counseling, advice, tutoring, or whatever else. Additionally, they were given smaller classrooms and told to have more interaction and group work.
So, while there were still lectures taking place — I remember the nursing students having to sit through lecture after lecture while one doctor or another gave them paragraphs of mind-numbing symptoms and correlations across a dizzying number of illnesses — my classes that took place in the remaining lecture halls had us craning around and sitting backwards in theater-style seats in order to better talk to our group members.
As to why these changes were taking place, the simple answer is research. By the mid-1980s1, pedagogical research had clearly shown that the listen-and-remember form of education was spectacularly ineffective. Instead, educators, armed with nascent neurological research, began looking at how memory is formed and how sensory input corresponds to retention and understanding. From there the increasingly popular methodologies of multi-modal and peer-centered learning were developed (among others). None of these new-ish forms of thinking supported the just listen and take notes form of education.
Yet even as these changes in education practice were implemented, the title of lecturer stuck around, stratified into the hierarchy of university education. And, had capitalism kept up its end of the bargain, this might all end with a chuckle: isn't it funny how lecturers do everything but lecture?
Instead, we’ve ended up here, where, depending on the country and the university, lecturer means everything from fully-tenured professor with a research budget, international acclaim, and, presumably, champagne in silver chalices, to barely-paid, overworked, overstressed, teacher with all the responsibilities of a full time staff member with none of the benefits. Guess which one of these is more common?
The very items you need to apply to a lecturer position aren’t available to you unless you already have one.
Now, as I said, the actual title of lecturer can and does vary a lot from country to country. But the system I know is the one here in Japan, so here’s how lecturer breaks down within the Japanese national education system:
講師 (koshi) is the Japanese term for lecturer. And like most of the Japanese education system, its roots are over a century old and completely calcified. While it can be a tenured position, it is increasingly a part-time, contract position that provides the backbone of the university system.
Let me give you an example: some recent position listings I’ve seen state that applicants should have at least three recent publications. This seems fair enough as conducting and publishing research is considered integral to working at the highest levels of one’s field.
The trouble is, some universities do not allow part-time staff to do research; they do not provide funding, time, materials support, access to research tools or libraries, nor do they allow their part-time teachers to publish in internal journals (known as a kiyou [紀要]).
So, in other words, the very items you need in order to apply to a lecturer position are not easily attainable unless you already have a lecturer position. It reminds me of when I had to get my Japanese driver’s license and the only way to get to the testing center was to…drive.
So, let’s say you get one of these coveted part-time lecturer roles: because you’re part-time, you’re probably teaching at multiple schools, sometimes on the same day, conducting research in your own time and with your own money, sometimes on the sly, and seeing to your own educational development.
This can feel terribly isolating. You may not feel like you’re truly a part of the university you work at. You’re not invited to staff development seminars, not welcome in certain lounges, maybe not even given access to the wi-fi. And why? Because money.
Here’s a stat for you:
In 1998, there were about 45,370 “full-time” part-time lecturers (専業非常勤講師) in Japan. By 2016, that number had more than doubled to 93,145, amounting to roughly one-third of all university instructors—most living on under ¥3 million/year (≈ US $27 k) despite having PhDs or equivalent credentials.
Now, politicians and senior admin will tell you that this is because of Japan’s shrinking population and stagnant economy. Both of which may be true, neither of which excuses the growth of salaries and increase in the number of administrative positions in the same period.
And that particular pattern is being repeated the world over: lecturers, like all teachers, are under siege: more responsibility, less authority, more work, less pay.
I hope you were taking notes, this will all be on the test.
Stay Curious,
Joel
Sources for info on the situation lecturers face in Japanese universities:
The Tragedy of the Part-Time Lecturer: Poverty on the Rise Among Japan’s PhDs
Administrative efficiency of National University Corporations
Academic pessimism on university funding as Japan goes to polls
Several methodologies were questioning the educational value of lectures well before that but it wasn’t until the 80s that there was widespread acceptance that things needed to change.
How interesting- it seems very similar to here in the UK. Sure lecturers lecture, but they do SO much more.