Fastest Way to University Lecturing position? (1 Viewer)

[Omium]

Ive recently dropped from Engineering / Science To Science.

Im hoping to become a university lecturer or similar, Should i do my science degree, then honours then PHD?

Or, Do a Science/Education Degree and then continue with the science honours and PHD? would the education degree increase my chances so significantly thats its worth taking up?

Thanks

 

[RogueAcademic]

University lecturing has absolutely nothing to do with whether you have an education degree or not.* You lecture because you have some expertise in the subject matter of your lectures. Most lecturers are required to have PhDs as a result of that. So in that sense, you're right about science degree first, then honours, then PhD, then maybe a couple of years of post-doc work perhaps, then a lecturing position if you're offered one.

*That's why it's not hard to find lecturers who are incredibly bad at lecturing/teaching. But then again, to be fair, there are really bad school teachers too who purport to have education degrees.

 

[Will Shakespear]

an education degree is useful if u wanna do ur PhD and lecturing in education

the good thing about that is that it's a complete pseudoscience, u can basically publish any old shit with a bit of statistics to make it look good, and it's all too vague for anything to be clearly right or wrong so you get away with it

 

[RogueAcademic]

I should add that in science, 'university lecturing' is usually a short term transitional position for recent PhD graduates looking to move upwards through the academic ranks. Most post-PhD academic positions at university call for a suitably qualified applicant to lecture as well as research, with research being the main component of your employment. In fact, you'll find more positions are for research-only.

Sometimes the university is flexible with the lecturing/research balance. If you take on more lecturing duties, you don't have to spend as much time in research. But if you decide to focus more on research (and/or you also take on supervisory duties for honours/masters/PhD students), then you're allowed to cut back on the lecturing proportionately.

There aren't many university academics who only lecture and do nothing else (especially in the science field). In fact, I know only a very small handful of academics who only lecture, but they tend to be towards the end of a stellar academic career who are phasing out of the research field and just focusing on the lecturing part (because it's easy, predictable and reliable) before retiring completely.

 

[Survivor39]

Yes I agree with everything RogueAcademic has already said.

Omium, since you are doing a science degree, I suspect you would be interested in finding a job as a science university lecturer.

There are 3 options:

1) Teaching/research academics - academics who does both research and teaching. In science you are usually hired at a level of "Lecturer/Senior Lecturer/Associate Professor/Professor. Obviously the higher the position the higher the profile you have to be. You will definitely need to have a PhD and several post doc positions to build up your research profile (through publications in high impact factor peer reviewed journals), demonstrating your capacity at developing novel ideas/projects of your own.

2) Research Only - Rare. This is because the whole purpose of having a "lecturering position" is to teach undergrad students (to some degree supervise hons and postgrad students). You will DEFINITELY need a PhD. You can only become a research-based academic when you can support YOURSELF through your own grant. For example you apply for a grant called a fellowship grant, which support your salary while you do research (using other research grant money). So technically you are NOT hired by the University, but you will use university space and use their name/students. Fellowships are very hard to get (because you compete with very high progile postdocs).

3) Teaching Only. Like RogueAcademic has already mentioned, this is also rare. Because you don't do any research, you will be offered a position in the level of Associate Lecturer or Lecturer (the two lowest levels in academia). In some cases you do need a PhD for this -but not always (a masters or a very very good Honswill sometimes do).

The role of this position is to cover those academics who are on fellowships (they have money left from not having to hire the higher academics and use it to hire pure teaching stuff- very cost effective). Academia is really all about research. If you get a Nature or Science paper you will go up in rank. So as you can imagine you will probably be stuck as in a Lecturer position forever if you only do teaching.

Edit: You don't need an Education degree by the way.

 

[kevinx2]

Look at some of the lecturers qualifications, very few if any have any Education related; same with lecturer job advertisments too.

 

[zhugeliang]

you need to be good

 

[Omium]

you need to be good

Best Advice in this thread

 

[Lightlessice16]

Best Advice in this thread

haha XD

 

[Graney]

My advice would be to study business.

My dad became a lecturer with just his masters. He only had ~10 years experience in some not mind blowing positions.

Unlike science, where most of my lecturers are professors and there's only a few doctors, apparently the business faculty is full of doctors, or possibly even less, because the private sector is relatively competitive for talented people.

It's a hell of a lot easier path than becoming a science academic, for the same rewards.