Higher education leaders should create a ¡°Nobel Prize for Teaching¡± to give it the ¡°prestige¡± that it deserves, according to the creator of one of the world¡¯s most successful open learning platforms.

Shigeru Miyagawa, professor of linguistics and senior associate dean for open learning at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, told Times Higher Education that a high-profile global accolade would demonstrate that teaching, and not just research, should be key to academics¡¯ endeavours.

¡°If you look at how many years we spend training researchers compared with how much time is spent training teachers, it¡¯s not good, there¡¯s something not quite right,¡± said Professor Miyagawa, a co-founder of the MIT OpenCourseWare initiative, which aims to make all the university¡¯s educational materials freely available online.

Existing government initiatives such as the UK¡¯s teaching excellence framework were ¡°nothing but a beauty contest¡± for institutions, he argued, and did little to analyse the success of graduates as a result of teaching efforts.

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¡°We are abandoning our students,¡± Professor Miyagawa said. ¡°So long as we are adequate teachers we get tenure and we get promoted. A Nobel prize will put teaching on a prestigious level.¡±

Professor Miyagawa was speaking after taking part in a debate at Universia 2018, a conference of higher education leaders and influencers from across the world hosted by the University of Salamanca.

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In the panel session, Professor Miyagawa said that one of the biggest concerns in academia was that major companies were ¡°taking over¡± from universities in leading global research. But he said that he was ¡°not worried¡±, since moving research out of universities would be ¡°like Google shooting [itself] in the foot¡±.

And he said that doom-mongers were forgetting the equally important role that higher education institutions played in teaching. He said: ¡°Big companies need endless researchers ¨C new researchers. Where are they coming from? They are coming from graduate schools all over the world. And who is going to train them? Universities.¡±

Professor Miyagawa¡¯s comments followed a warning from earlier in the day by Jos¨¦ ?ngel Gurr¨ªa, secretary general of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, that universities were ¡°letting modern-day students down¡±.

In a keynote speech, Mr Gurr¨ªa said that a major review of curricula was needed to ensure that students graduated with the skills they needed for a rapidly changing job market.

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¡°¡®Upskilling¡¯ is the new currency of the 21st century,¡± he said. ¡°A high percentage of our students graduate [and] then face an employment market with very few opportunities¡­the results are frustration and rejection of the institutions we have set up in the past century.

¡°This results in [the kind of] social and political fragmentation which gives rise to Brexit and the electoral results in the US.¡±

rachael.pells@timeshighereducation.com