1

I'm a European doctoral candidate about to defend her PhD dissertation. I'd love to eventually get a job at a small teaching university with a relatively larger focus on education rather than research; I'm thinking of something like SLACs (small liberal arts colleges) in the US.

I am given to understand that early-career European academics are unlikely to be hired at a US SLAC. If this is indeed the case, where do I look for a list of such institutions within the European Union? Does such a list or database even exist? If not, how do I compile one?

(I am aware that some European countries are reluctant to hire you unless you speak the local language - let us please disregard this for now.)

Improve this question
8
  • Note that this site isn't the place to get specific recommendations, but since you ask "how to find them" I'll guess it will be kept open.
    – Buffy
    Aug 8, 2022 at 15:10
  • Please clarify your specific problem or provide additional details to highlight exactly what you need. As it's currently written, it's hard to tell exactly what you're asking.
    – Community Bot
    Aug 8, 2022 at 17:40
  • I am not entirely sure what I am supposed to clarify. I am looking for a resource (such as a list or database) on teaching universities in the EU. In the absence of such a resource, I am looking for a heuristic to find small European universities with a teaching focus, comparable to SLACs in the US.
    – SLHsqua
    Aug 8, 2022 at 20:40
  • 1
    From Wikipedia: "Although it draws on European antecedents,[2] the liberal arts college is strongly associated with American higher education ..." I don't think we have an equivalent in the EU. Nor do we have a distinction between teaching and research universities. There are positions with a teaching focus but usually fresh PhD graduates are not hired for these. Rather, some post-docs are required to teach in addition to their research.
    – Roland
    Aug 9, 2022 at 5:15
  • 2
    So I think you might be more likely to get useful answers if you elaborate further on the notion "small teaching universities": which are the criteria you are interested in, besides the focus on teaching? E.g., which field(s) are you interested in? Are you interested in institutions that focus on vocational training or rather on institutions which focus on theoretical topics? Would you like to teach subjects which go considerably beyond a typical high school curriculum, or would you also be interested in teaching a curriculum close to (or equal to the higher grades of) highschool level?
    – Jochen Glueck
    Aug 9, 2022 at 11:44

2 Answers 2

Reset to default
1

This is an answer for Germany, which is probably not applicable to other European countries.

I cannot answer where to find such universities, since no equivalent to SLACs exist in Germany. However, I can say where to find teaching focussed jobs in Germany:

  1. Many of the rather teaching focussed universities are calles universities of applied sciences or Fachhochschulen. There are quite a lot of them with many open positions. (Note that there are quite specific conditions you need to have to be eligible to be hired, see e.g. this question. And note that the pure focus on teaching is in the process of been given up and much more research is being done.)
  2. As I guess is the case in many European countries, Germany also has many private universities. These are quite often ratger teaching focussed.
  3. There are some pure teaching position in all kinds of public universities. Look for positions called Akademischer Rat or Lehrkraft für besondere Aufgaben. Requirements vary widely, and research might be a requirement. And often people are being hired that are well-known to the university.

Academic job posting in Germany (at least for 1 and 2) can usually be found on zeit.de.

Improve this answer
1
  • OP doesn't appear to be qualified for a teaching position at a university of applied sciences (i.e., they seem to have no industry experience). A teaching position at a university is the better option. E.g., one of our PhD graduates got such a position because the university had a vacant professorship and needed someone to fill in for a lecture. Naturally, such (temporary) positions are not really attractive.
    – Roland
    Aug 10, 2022 at 6:55
-1

I'm not in the EU so this is a bit speculative. But this is how I'd go about it. I think many (most?) countries have a national education office (ministry). They may publish a list of accredited colleges and universities. A web search will probably turn up many of these, though you might need to know the local language to understand them. There may be some indication in such lists about the mission of those places. You can then go from there to the websites of places that seem interesting.

Another possibility is that such colleges (in the US, at least) are potentially members of various associations of similar places. If you can find one, you can, perhaps, go from there to the association to find a list of members.

Improve this answer

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .