The Challenges of Teaching in College

Teaching in College: An Overview of Different Sources

Teaching in college, even before the pandemic, was posing unprecedented challenges for professors. The changes in the curriculum, the increasingly diverse student body, the financial struggles of both educational institutions and students alike, and the need to prepare students for a tough job market are all examples of the issues educators were facing at the institutional level. However, as can be seen in multiple sources, the challenges have only grown during the pandemic.

For the online publication Inside Higher Ed, Greene (2022) describes how college professors like herself were under increased pressure to teach hybrid online and brick-and-mortar classes in college. Students and parents felt that student should get their money’s worth, if they were living on campus, once the risks of the pandemic had subsided. But for students at higher risk, or who could not attend classes, instructors had to do double duty, creating classes that could function both in-person and virtually. Even many students on campus were not attending classes because it was simply easier to learn from the comfort of their dorm rooms.

Greene (2022) also notes that in her large lecture classes, most students were choosing to opt-out of in-person classes after the first few weeks, preferring to learn at home with a textbook and class Blackboard. In fact, many of her colleagues even said they had to create two tracks: one for students who wished to attend classes in person and another who preferred to use online resources. What was so extraordinary to Greene (2022) was even students who wished to attend college as residents seemed uninterested in the in-person component of learning; this was a different model of undergraduate learning for most residential colleges of the past.

Previously, even residential schools who offered online classes or online graduate degrees still based the majority of the undergraduate program around students attending classes. Although the article was specifically about large lecture classes, in the past the classes Greene (2022) were teaching pre-pandemic had often been divided into smaller sections to allow for more face-to-face interactions, when there were no remote, online options. From a teaching perspective, at present, Greene (2022) wrote she is essentially teaching two classes, one remote and one in person, and getting paid for teaching one.

There is evidence that this frustration with online learning might be a product of the assumptions of the American college educational system, given that a PloS study of medical professors at a medical school in Egypt who was forced to go remote yielded extraordinary results. According to Zalat (et al., 2021), the majority (88%) of the staff members actually felt that giving online courses increased the technological skills of students and benefited staff members. There was an almost equally high acceptance of e-learning and ease of use, particularly among younger staff members. The only problem cited by faculty was difficulties which arose with Internet connections (Zalat et al., 2021).

It is important to note this was not for undergraduate classes, but graduate, medical courses for professional study. When Greene (2022) was transitioning to remote learning, she was forced to adopt a hybrid model, while in the Egyptian case all learning was remote. The Egyptian respondents disagreed this made test-taking more difficult, and also said that this allowed students to learn more at their own pace. It should be noted, however, that the majority of classes in the PloS study used multiple-choice, objective exams, and classes were lecture-based, rather than placed any emphasis on face-to-face learning (Zalat et al., 2021).

In contrast, a 2020 study conducted by the Chronicle of Higher Education entitled On the Verge of Burnout found that more than a third of all professors missed the personal connection they had experienced with students their classes pre-pandemic and were thinking of leaving teaching and higher education entirely. The Chronicle of Higher Education survey consisted of data solicited from 1,122 professors at colleges and universities. The professors also stated that additional childcare responsibilities and a lack of preparation for remote learning was very stressful. This was especially true of non-tenured, female, and younger professors. Untenured faculty also stated that their lack of hope of entering a tenure track, combined with the stresses of learning new technologies to teach, had made remaining in academia unsupportable. Increased workload, anxiety, lack of childcare, social isolation, and the stresses students were facing all contributed to faculty stress.

Even at Brown University, an Ivy League institution, which has more financial and technological resources than most colleges, professors reported struggling with additional teaching responsibilities during the pandemic, as reported in the student newspaper The Brown Daily Herald. Particularly hard-hit were adjunct professors, hired on a course-by-course basis who were not tenure prospects, and who had little research or institutional support (Onderdonk, 2022). They also reported having a much higher workload because of the demands of remote learning, with no additional financial support, causing many of them to consider abandoning teaching.

Overall, the articles paint a picture of higher education teaching as in a crisis. It is noteworthy that they do not contain student perspectives, and mainly focused on faculty stresses. In fact, there is evidence in the Greene (2022) and Zalat (et al., 2021) articles that students and some faculty members found remote learning helpful for various reasons. However, the Chronicle of Education report and the article by Onderdonk (2022) note the social isolation of both faculty and students, at least at the undergraduate level, created stresses for students and faculty and inhibiting learning. Faculty members were not being financially compensated for their additional workloads. For faculty members without tenure, they found themselves even more frustrated, given their already-low pay and the low commitment by their institutions for supporting their careers. Also, many faculty members chose the teaching profession because of the face-to-face personal contact of teaching, which they lacked during the pandemic.

Jesus’s many roles included the role of a teacher. His teaching and support were both through his ministry on Earth, but also remotely through his teaching through his apostles such as Paul. Paul himself said: “For my part, even though I am not physically present, I am with you in spirit. As one who is present with you in this way, I have already passed judgment in the name of our Lord Jesus on the one who has been doing this” (1 Corinthians 5:3). This suggests that even though there may be a value in physical presence, teaching through presence of the spirit is also possible.