‘Ph.D. Rule May Cost Teachers Jobs’

“Mr. Glenn,” the dean began, “if you don’t complete your doctorate this year, the university will not offer you a contract for next year.”

“I will complete my doctorate before January,” I assured him. And I did--because an earned doctorate was expected to be held by all professors in the elementary education department at Cal State Los Angeles--in 1970.

Nearly 20 years later, it appalls me to read that Cal State Fullerton continues to offer employment to a professor who has taught there for 14 years without a doctorate. The value of a doctorate or the worth of work experience is not the issue. The issue is enforcing an appropriate prerequisite for employment as a professor at a state university.

Why should the university employ professors who lack theoretical and practical experience? The answer is clear--it shouldn’t. Yet it does, which is an unfair practice to persons who complete doctorates and find unqualified persons firmly entrenched in positions for which they have not been prepared academically.

For the university to demand that some professors hold a doctorate before they are considered for employment and to excuse others from holding the same degree is untenable, discriminatory--and wrong.

Congratulations to Jack Coleman, vice president of academic affairs at Cal State Fullerton, who has recommended that the university hire “fully academically qualified” faculty. This would mean that only persons who are qualified--through education and experience--would be considered for professorial positions at Cal State Fullerton, a requirement that should have been adopted long ago by all California State University campuses.

HUGH GLENN

Laguna Niguel