Study reveals dearth of doctoral degrees.
British postgraduate students might often be better qualified than their lecturers, according to a study, Academic Staff in UK Higher Education Institutions, released on 1 November. The report finds that just over half of the full-time academic staff across all disciplines and institutions have doctoral degrees. Author Malcolm Tight at Lancaster University, UK, warns that the results reflect poorly on the quality of postgraduate education at some UK universities. He argues that universities have focused on diversifying their student base at the expense of developing the quality of their faculty. “It's certainly possible that a doctoral student might have more knowledge of a discipline than her or his professor,” Tight says.
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Teachers without PhDs. Nature 491, 485 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1038/nj7424-485b
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nj7424-485b