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Students have learning difficulties: their lecturers have teaching difficulties.

I am a graduate of four universities and I have lectured in at least a dozen departments on four continents. And I have consistently observed that many lecturers do not like lecturing.

Statistically, the chances are that you are one of them. You’d do anything to get out of teaching a course. You expend huge effort to obtain grant money in the hope of “buying” yourself out of teaching; I’ve heard many academics proudly talk about having done so, knowing how jealous their interlocutor will be.

Perhaps you would volunteer for tedious and stressful admin jobs just to have fewer lectures. Perhaps you would even bribe your PhD students or postdocs to deliver a number of your assigned lectures, tutorials or practicals, assuring them that the “experience” will help them get an academic post.

But why? After all, the job is called “lecturer”.

There are three explanations. The first is that what is attractive about an academic job is the freedom it gives to pursue personal passions. It allows one to research practically anything, so it does not really feel like work. My wife calls my salary my “private income”. You choose the job to conduct research, not actually to lecture.

There is also considerable choice in where and how you research. Long before Covid, many academics “worked from home”, for instance. And this fulfils the most important aspect of intrinsic motivation: autonomy.

Another intrinsic motivator is a sense of mastery of a topic/technique, and academia offers that, too: while your expertise might be obscure (and trivial to many), it steadily increases over time.

Third (according to the theory), research gives a sense of purpose: discovery, understanding, knowledge. Of course, teaching can give a sense of mastery and purpose, too, but less autonomy: not only in the topic of the mastery but also when and where it is exercised.

The second explanation for the common antipathy towards teaching relates to the type (personality, motivation, skills) of people who are attracted to academia. It is no secret that academia is heavily populated by individuals with neurodivergent traits, which often include communication difficulties. In my experience, the profile of the average academic, particularly if they are research-active, is an obsessive introvert.

I was surprised as an undergraduate, postgraduate and lecturer how many academics appeared to have few social skills or emotional intelligence and did not enjoy any form of interaction, including with their peers. Of course, I knew (and know) a number of very charming, socially confident and amusing dons but they were always the minority.  

And there may be less anecdotal evidence for this. A well-cited published back in 1983 compared successful researchers and lecturers. It concluded that the creative researcher is “ambitious, enduring, seeking definiteness, dominant, showing leadership, aggressive, independent, non-meek, and non-supportive. The effective teacher is best described as liberal, sociable, showing leadership, extraverted, non-anxious, objective, supporting, non-authoritarian, non-defensive, intelligent, and aesthetically sensitive”.

And here’s the rub – not mentioned in the paper. You are promoted on your research (particularly grant-getting), not your teaching. This leads to the testable hypothesis that the more senior people at universities are the worst lecturers – and are, among other things, aggressive and non-supportive.

The third explanation for academics’ dislike of teaching relates to what we now have to call the customers. The relationship between lecturer and student has changed dramatically in my lifetime. I am not going to suggest that today’s students are not as bright, motivated or charming as those 30 years ago but ever-rising fees have altered their expectations significantly.

When students were grateful to get into university for free, they seemed happier to tolerate the occasional poor lecturer. But now they want a combination of super-performer, mentor and coach. Or at least they did before they could get AI to write their essays; now all they really demand is a lenient marker who will give them top grades. And where’s the fun in that?

I hear readers object to this thesis on many grounds. They know academics who are good at lecturing and enjoy it. So do I, but very few (alas). Some will mutter that I have grossly and inaccurately stereotyped the whole profession, with no differentiation between disciplines, faculties and institutions. I recognise this: there are differences between STEM dons and those in the management faculty, for instance. But not so wide as to invalidate my broad point.

So what can be done? Have twin tracks: teaching and research. That has been tried, of course, but those who take the former track are soon seen as “lesser brethren”. So change the individual departmental points system so that teaching counts more? Many business schools already do this because they have a “bums on seats” model of funding.

But then we run up against the age-old problem of how you identify the best teachers. Student feedback is the usual answer but we know how imperfect that is. That said, more detailed student feedback could potentially be used to help lecturers do a better job. But who would ensure this – and how?

I knew I was different from my peers as soon as I got a full-time lecturing job. I rather enjoyed teaching: tutorials and labs, as well as lectures. It may be my subclinical histrionic personality disorder and the need to show off. Or it might be my genuine desire to “spread the good news” about the latest research. But for years, unlike my colleagues, I traded admin for teaching: I was not good at admin (I’m a functional impulsive) and did not enjoy any aspect of it.

Whatever your strengths, an academic job is still an attractive option. There is, compared with many other jobs, still a considerable amount of autonomy. And it is an honour and a pleasure to be surrounded by clever people. But while I have nearly always respected my peers, their research-favouring personality traits mean I have not liked them very much.

Adrian Furnham is professor emeritus at the Norwegian Business School. He usually got good marks from student evaluations of his lectures.