TOEFL ibt114点を取った私の受験体験記②受験・結果分析編

Nowadays, the quality of education has been increasingly integral to our lives. Some people believe that universities should increase salaries that university professors receive to enhance this quality, whereas some may disagree. In my view, it is imperative to pay higher remunerations to teachers at universities to improve the quality of education.

To begin with, money acts as a precursor to providing professors with incentives to perform better. If professors are given higher salaries, they will be more encouraged to take responsibilities in delivering well-developed lectures. For example, when I was in my first year at Tokyo University, which is one of the most famous universities in Japan, I was so disappointed by the quality of classes lead by professors. They used the same slides and materials every year and did not even change the content of exams. Although this made it significantly easy for students to achieve good results on the exams, they did not study a lot as they knew that they could pass the exams. Since I was a student who always wanted to get challenged by teachers and work hard, this fact smashed my expectation I had when I enrolled in the university. However, when I was in my second year, the university decided to increase salaries paid to its professors by approximately no less than 10 percent as the university was aware that low salaries were causing serious problems in the quality of sessions. Surprisingly, many of the professors changed their teaching styles and made their lectures more interactive and challenging. This example evidently portrays how remunerations can positively affect the quality of education.

Furthermore, gratifying professors with high salaries paves the way for sustainable operations of universities. For example, Hokkai University, which was one of the local universities in my hometown, merged with a different university in 2002 due to a low morale that university professors had because of low salaries. The university was in a healthy financial condition thanks to a huge amount of grants from the local government, but it did not use that money to motivate teachers. Since all the professors at the university were aware of that, their satisfaction level declined year after year and many started moving to a different college. Consequently, the university finally ended up having only two professors left. This resulted in the merger and definitely this was not a favorable outcome for either the university or students. Therefore, there is no doubt that paying high salaries to professors is the key to a successful operation of universities and also quality education.

In summary, the university should spend a lot of money on salaries that university professors receive. Not only will this motivate the professors but also this allows universities to have lower risk of losing the professors. Thus, we should encourage universities not to stint on professors' salaries to ensure that quality education is made available to students.