Staff Development • Compulsory in Principle
Shaping minds with minimal contact since whenever we arrived
At Perfunctory University, excellent teaching is not about what students learn. It is about how confidently a lecturer can occupy a timetable without being constrained by it. Our celebrated method replaces preparation, explanation and feedback with personality, improvisation and an unwavering belief that attendance is a colonial construct.
“Why teach the module when you can simply be adjacent to it?”
— PU Learning and Teaching Strategy, abridged without permission
The Five Pillars of PU Pedagogy
Pillar 01
Flexible Presence
A lecture begins when you wander in and ends when you feel it has made its point.
- Arrive late to encourage anticipatory learning.
- Leave early to promote independent study.
- Occasionally do not arrive at all: absence is the purest flipped classroom.
- Convert a four-hour session into one intensive hour and report a 75% efficiency gain.
Pillar 02
Content-Free Content
Academic theory dates quickly. Celebrity references are forever, or at least until the next cohort.
- Ramble expansively about whichever musicians you remembered on the bus.
- Make large cultural claims; evidence only narrows the conversation.
- Show a film clip, say “Discuss,” and resist the temptation to provide guidance.
- Ignore the prepared slides. Perch on the desk so students know learning is occurring informally.
Pillar 03
Theory-Free Theory
Your personal generalisations are the literature review. Relevance is merely another contested discourse.
- Replace named academic theories with strongly held, academically adjacent opinions.
- Teach one favourite topic regardless of the module title.
- Prefer sweeping assertions to fussy distinctions, sources or counterarguments.
- If students report learning nothing of substance, congratulate them on encountering epistemic openness.
Pillar 04
Guided Unguidance
Students must construct their own knowledge, ideally from somebody else’s materials.
- Produce notes so unusable that students become resourceful through necessity.
- Direct them towards the assessment question matching the only topic you covered.
- Leave useful online resources to your predecessor, who has already done so.
- Call the resulting confusion “authentic intellectual struggle.”
The PU Feedback GuaranteeEvery student receives a number. Words are an optional enhancement.
70%
Pillar 05
Assessment Without Explanation
A mark should create questions, never answer them. Feedback risks revealing the basis of a decision and may lead to the dangerous expectation of support.
- Award a respectable-looking number, especially when it is conspicuously below a student’s usual standard.
- Attach no comments. Silence develops resilience and protects staff time.
- If asked to explain the mark, become visibly affronted by the concept of scrutiny.
- Reframe an academic query as a moral failing on the student’s part.
- Substitute an accusation for an answer and conclude the meeting at peak educational impact.
Career Progression: The Perfunctory Escalator
PU recognises that teaching ability can become an obstacle to academic advancement. Our promotion framework therefore rewards the higher competencies:
- Confidence over competence: appear certain enough that nobody asks what you can actually do.
- Profile over practice: cultivate an inspiring institutional narrative while somebody else tends the classroom.
- Mobility over accountability: move onwards before student dissatisfaction acquires a committee.
- Strategic sponsorship: gather eminent supporters willing to mistake ascent for achievement.
- Operational bewilderment: reach a position beyond your ability to perform it, then make the position responsible.
Essential Qualifications
- An impressive title, or the confidence to stand near one.
- Demonstrable commitment to teaching in name only.
- The ability to mistake criticism for persecution and questions for insubordination.
- A robust network of senior colleagues who can see no clothes and admire the tailoring.
- No measurable evidence of student benefit that might create an unfortunate precedent.
How to Apply
Submit a personal statement describing your passion for education without including any examples of education. Shortlisted candidates will deliver a four-hour teaching demonstration lasting no more than sixty minutes. Those who do not attend may be fast-tracked.
A note from Legal Studies: Perfunctory University is fictional, as is this staff-development programme. It is satire about institutional and teaching practices; it does not describe or identify any real lecturer.