Teaching without faculty: policy interactions and their effects on the network of teaching in German higher education

Abstract

The impact of higher education reforms on teaching at faculty level in Germany has seldom been explored. Research on teaching at university so far centres on how to teach. Yet, before any (best) practice can take place, teaching requires a specific site where a specific teacher meets a specific number of students. To bring about teaching, teaching loads have to be matched with student numbers, which to a large degree depends on how existing policies interact. Drawing on actor-network theory, we show that due to a peculiar entanglement of the products of present as well as past policies – staff planning charts, curricular norm values, student numbers, block grants, etc. – in several cases administration defines teaching loads higher than the actual teaching staff at faculty level can provide. In order to close this gap, faculties have to accommodate a teaching load that is true to administrative calculations but fictional in reality. Paradoxically, the only way to do so within the given policy entanglement is to use academics for teaching on the premise that they explicitly do not count as teachers: they have to remain disconnected from the teaching faculty.