« Sargent Shriver, 1915-2011 | Main | artistic excellence as a function of historical time »
January 20, 2011
making guest lecturing pay
I think guest lectures are helpful: they broaden the perspectives and expertise available in a given course. In general, they happen as the result of a kind of "gift economy": you agree to give a guest presentation in a colleague's course without expecting any kind of reward, even a return visit from that colleague. Gift economies can work quite well--sometimes more efficiently than market economies. But there is no norm in academia of offering to give guest lectures. Instead, you have to ask someone to be a guest in your class, and that can be awkward. It's a gift economy in which the recipient initiates the arrangement: not a recipe for success.
Thus, if guest lecturing is beneficial, we should switch from a flawed gift economy to some kind of exchange system. Professors should earn credit for giving guest lectures. I am not sure I would define the credit as a right to receive a guest lecture in one's own course, because there might be no one available to provide appropriate material. Instead, I would identify some modest good that is in short supply and offer it to professors who amass sufficient credits for guest-lecturing.
January 20, 2011 4:07 PM | category: academia | Comments
Comments
nonePost a comment
Thanks for signing in, . Now you can comment. (sign out)
(If you haven't left a comment here before, you may need to be approved by the site owner before your comment will appear. Until then, it won't appear on the entry. Thanks for waiting.)