Would a PHD Make Me a Better Teacher?

In this classic song by Sam Cooke, the singer is both honest and has his priorities straight.





I am not a historian. A historian, as I understand the term, is a person who studies primary source materials and uses this stuff to produce original historical information. This is what a person must do when writing a dissertation to earn the degree that truly signifies his or her entrance into the profession: a PHD. When I earned my Master’s Degree, I wrote only one paper that came close to producing original historical information, and it was not my Master’s Thesis. In fact, I did not write a thesis. Instead, I took a comprehensive exam. And while this was by no means easy, it mostly required the mastery of information that I learned from reading books written by real historians. It was just a tough essay test.


As a community college history professor, my job still involves organizing and attempting to explain information produced by historians. I see myself as a “middleman” trying to relay this information to students who, by and large, will never read any in-depth historical scholarship. Let’s face it. Much of what is called historical research is produced almost exclusively for other historians and for some occasional history buffs. If historical information is to have any impact beyond this small community of history lovers, then we need effective teachers who can make this stuff interesting and relevant for the general public.


While higher education is always a positive thing, the simple fact is that the skills acquired by earning a PHD are not the same as those needed for effective teaching. A teacher needs to be a combination of a performer, organizer, coach, sage, and critic. Knowledge of subject, writing ability, and the ability to find and organize information are all required, but in themselves, these skills that are developed through the earning of a PHD do not help with performance and presentation. Over many years of taking college classes, I experienced everyone from the great teacher to the terrible (and many in between.) The only thing that all of these men and women had in common, by and large, was a PHD degree.


When universities hire full-time professors, they are often more concerned with academic credentials and future research potential than they are with teaching ability. At institutions that view research as (at least) a priority equal to the education of students, this makes some sense. But at community colleges where the primary focus is supposed to be teaching, I hope that fancy academic credentials are not viewed as the most important factors. Instead, they should look for evidence that a candidate has taught lower division survey classes effectively. I suspect, however, without any actual evidence to back it up, that some schools might be dazzled by the degrees. I hope that I am wrong.


I have often thought about going back to school and getting a PHD, but practical issues have generally gotten in the way. It’s hard to earn much of an income, especially when you are teaching part-time, while splitting time with a PHD program. Seemingly, this became even more impossible when my kids were born. Watching my kids grow up has always been a higher priority for me than further higher education. And when you combine these problems with the many stories that I have heard over the years of people with PHD degrees who can’t find full-time jobs, the costs of going back to school clearly outweigh the benefits.


I also have a more philosophic reason, however, for not going back to get a PHD. Since I want to spend the rest of my career teaching at the community college level, I cannot see how a PHD degree will do very much to make me better at what I hope to keep doing. PHD programs require you to study a specific field of history in a great deal of depth. In my line of work, we teach lower division history courses that address a wide variety of topics covering long periods of time. In my one semester Early World Civilizations course, we cover every major civilization that existed over a span of 5,000 years of history. So how could a highly specialized PHD degree help me teach that class more effectively? The most productive thing for me to do is to continue improving my teaching skills. Part of this, of course, is learning my subject matter better. Fortunately, real historians are constantly at work providing plenty of information to help me.