Please, don’t call me “doctor.” I don’t have a Ph.D., an Ed.D., an M.D., a Psy.D., a J.D., a Hum.D, a D.D., or, to my knowledge, A.D.D.
There. Let that serve as a blanket correction to all who have addressed me over the years as “Dr. Jenkins,” no doubt because of the various teaching and administrative positions I’ve held.
Some, like students, either don’t realize that I’m “just” an M.A. or else don’t understand the difference. Others — mostly job applicants — operate under the very reasonable assumption that someone who doesn’t hold a doctorate probably won’t take offense at being addressed as “doctor,” while someone who does probably will be offended if the title is omitted. (I’ve always operated under that assumption myself, having generally found it to be true.)
Of course, I correct people on the spot when I can do so without causing them embarrassment or derailing the conversation. Otherwise, I look for an opportunity to clarify my status at some later point in our relationship. And I always try to make it clear to my students, at the beginning of each term, that it’s “Mr. Jenkins” or “Professor Jenkins.” Or, if they prefer, they can simply call me “Master.”
What I am about to say here is not intended as an anti-doctorate screed. Hey, some of my best friends are Ph.D.'s. More important, I spent enough time in a Ph.D. program to know that completing a doctorate of any type is a monumental achievement, and I have great respect for those who’ve done it.
I just don’t feel inferior to them, either intellectually, professionally, or socially — any more than I feel inferior to my good friend who happens to be an OB/GYN and makes three times as much money as I do. He decided what he wanted to do in life and then obtained the education he needed to achieve that goal. I did the same thing.
That’s why I’m troubled by what I see as a growing infatuation, among community colleges, with the Ph.D. — sometimes to the exclusion of highly qualified candidates with an M.A., who might be better teachers. A handful of two-year colleges around the country are actually insisting on the terminal degree, while many others are actively working to increase the percentage of their faculty members who have doctorates.
No doubt the trend is fueled, in part, by the recent influx of Ph.D.'s into a very tight job market. There are simply more candidates with doctorates out there, and more of them seem willing to consider teaching at a community college. By and large, that’s probably a good thing.
The problem lies with the colleges themselves. Why is it that they want to hire more Ph.D.'s, after all? To raise their prestige in the community or impress sister institutions? To brag about their numbers in their annual reports? Or do they genuinely believe that having a Ph.D. makes someone a better teacher?
Obviously, some people feel that way. A recent poster on one of The Chronicle’s blogs had this to say: “College was supposed to be ‘higher’ education because the instruction came from the producers of knowledge and not just some rube with a master’s degree.”
Sounds to me like somebody has a bit of a God complex.
That aside, the assertion that someone with “just a master’s” isn’t qualified to teach introductory college courses deserves a rebuttal. Let’s start by acknowledging that, in the traditional hierarchy of graduate education, a master’s is the teaching degree. (The word “master” even comes from the Latin word “magister,” which means “teacher.”) Recipients of the degree have mastered their content areas and are therefore, by definition, competent to teach in those areas.
The doctorate, by comparison, is a research degree. Of course, most people who hold doctorates also have master’s degrees (or the equivalent), so they’re clearly qualified to teach as well as to conduct research. But the doctorate itself doesn’t make them any more qualified to do the former, at least in lower-division courses.
In other words, having a doctorate doesn’t automatically make someone a better teacher of freshmen and sophomores, and to suggest otherwise is absurd. If you’re a research chemist, you might well be a “producer of knowledge” in the sense that you’re constantly discovering new things about the narrow area of chemistry you’re studying. But that knowledge probably has little or no relation to your firstand second-year chemistry courses.
That is, if you even teach entry-level courses. Because, let’s be honest, many researchers don’t. At the vast majority of Research I institutions, the teaching of introductory classes is the sole province of the graduate students, who are, well, rubes with master’s degrees, I guess.
But I digress. The question was whether someone needs a Ph.D. to teach at a community college, and to that I answer: no, of course not. Two-year colleges are almost exclusively teaching institutions, and for faculty members at a teaching institution, a teaching degree should be quite enough. In fact, most of the M.A.'s I’ve worked with obtained that degree specifically because that’s what they wanted to do: teach.
Consider my case. I went to graduate school intending to earn a Ph.D. and become a literary theorist. Along the way, I figured out that what I really wanted to do was teach composition. After completing my M.A., and the course work for the Ph.D., I decided I had all the formal education I needed and went out and got a job. Twenty-three years later, I have absolutely no regrets.
Would finishing my doctorate all those years ago have made me a better teacher today? I honestly don’t see how. A slightly better-paid teacher, perhaps, but not more competent. The best training I’ve received has been in the classroom. The 20 or 30 courses I taught during the time it would have taken me to write a dissertation were far more valuable to me professionally than an obscure monograph collecting dust in a library.
I’m not saying that having a doctorate makes someone a worse teacher. Clearly, there are good and bad teachers on both sides of the Ph.D. line. My experience interviewing and supervising Ph.D.'s over the years suggests that, on average, they’re more interested in research than in teaching — which is probably why they pursued a Ph.D. to begin with — but of course, that’s a pretty broad generalization. Most of the great teachers who inspired me when I was an undergraduate and a graduate student held doctorates, and since then, I’ve worked beside many Ph.D.'s cut from the same cloth.
The problem arises when administrators and hiring committees at two-year colleges assume that job candidates with Ph.D.'s are more qualified for a faculty position just because they have doctorates. That’s rarely the case, and such assumptions can cause us to overlook some truly outstanding, committed teachers who have “just a master’s.”
Readers often ask me if they need to finish a doctorate in order to teach at a community college. I tell them, “If you have a burning desire to get a doctorate, or will feel incomplete without one, then get one. If you want to go into upper administration or teach at a four-year college one day, then get one. But if what you really want to do is teach at a community college, the master’s is all you need.” I believe that’s sound advice, and I would hope that most of my colleagues — especially those who serve on search committees — would agree.
After all, you know what they say: the more rubes, the merrier.