Financial incentives could well make teaching sexy again | Jenny Rohn

Has teaching has been the poor cousin of research for too long? asks Jenny Rohn

There's an old adage: 'those who can't do, teach'.

But this doesn't really apply to taught science subjects at the university level, at least in my experience over a few decades in university settings around the world. If anything, it's the opposite: stressed-out scientists, who do very well by the all-powerful yardstick of research excellence, have to be dragged from their labs to the podium to transmit their wisdom to the younger generation. As you might expect from a random sample of the population, the majority of whom have no actual pedagogical training, some are better at this task than others.