Teaching Quality in Higher Education : the Course

Abstract

Campus teaching is not independent of campus politics. Quality of teaching is partly a function of who cares. The complexity of the disciplines taught is not justification for indifference to the needs of students-and the needs of the public, and the state, and the campus administrative offices, and the instructors. Teaching is not merely a matter of communicating but also of providing opportunity to gain skills, understandings, and capacity to persevere, some of which will be outside the comprehension of some of those who teach. Campus politics today seldom mirrors the Marxist, industrialist, civil rights and anti-war battles of the past. Today's macro-politics are driven by global economic causes, particularly the drawing of students away from work in their home communities to the technological and business centers of the more economically developed cities and countries. The micro-politics of teaching continues to be largely a matter of who gets to teach the courses they want to te