So wrote Dominic Fenech, dean of the Faculty of Arts, about the University Students' Council (KSU) survey on University lecturers. Well, he can count on at least one partner in irritation. I've taught at University for almost eight years. This is also my second year as head of the Department of Sociology, which means that dealing with students is everyday life. This to establish my stake, not my infallibility.

I'm not interested in discussing the survey results. If (some) students said lecturers were boring and lacked pedagogical skills, so be it. It is an opinion they're entitled to and contesting it would be as foolish as trying to convince Adrian Vassallo that topless is okay.

I do, however, take serious issue with the KSU for conducting this survey. I'm also obscenely miffed at the parrots at Umasa (the lecturers' union) who, a day after the survey was publicised, said "they agreed there is more to be done" and squawked something or other about "a strategy for training in pedagogy, educational technologies, and lecturing methods" (The Times, June 15).

There's a reason why I so hated this survey. In boiling University down to the lecture room and to "teaching", KSU have done our institution - and themselves, given they've chosen to spend their best years there - a monumental disservice. (As for Umasa, I'd rather stop there.)

Let me first make some preliminary points. For one, lecturing is not teaching. The difference is not just a matter of quantity (more material, more complicated) but also one of quality.

When one boils a kettle, one raises the temperature of the water (quantity). At some point, however, the water boils and becomes steam (quality). Likewise, lecturing is not a 'higher level' of teaching; it's something else altogether and requires a different kind of competence.

Cambridge is, shall we say, a fairly decent university, and one might expect lectures there to be state-of-the-art. And yet, a good number of Cambridge dons still write and read out their lectures. Some famous names come to mind which it would be too snotty to mention.

I remember one particular professor of European history for whom 'eye contact' probably meant a lucky night, and 'Powerpoint' something to do with yoga. He used to just stand there, brolly propped up against the lectern like he expected it to rain indoors, and drone on and on.

Not that he ever asked our opinion, but it was magic. Partly because the content of his lectures was consistently superb, more importantly because he 'stood for something', so to speak. One could tell this was a man for whom scholarship meant everything.

Time to discard once and for all the cliché that the wisest thinkers are not necessarily the best lecturers. It simply doesn't hold at University, where the best lecturers are invariably also the best scholars, irrespective of whether or not they use flowcharts and interactive whiteboards. That's because they are able to offer something that's much harder to master than 'teaching technologies'. The word's 'inspiration'.

In my time as an undergraduate student at the University of Malta, I - like my colleagues - had the privilege of 'being around' some of the best scholars on the island. Most never actually taught me (so much for lectures), but the very thought that I was in their company proved a daily inspiration.

Our current rector once told me that "a professor professes". I've half a mind to get a hoodie to spray-paint that slogan on the KSU's door one of these nights.

What I figure the rector meant was that the university experience goes well beyond the everyday details of the lecture room. Actually, the minority of students who constantly moan that lectures are boring tend to be themselves boring and dull, since they can't see beyond those four walls. Students need to understand (and I'm happy to say a good number of them do) that they deserve much more than pedagogy.

They deserve lecturers who are well-qualified, internationally-published and -networked, and intelligent. Professors who might not be equipped with laser pointers, but who are around on campus (and beyond) to engage students as thinking adults.

A tall order actually, that comes with salaries to match. I trust that at this stage, the KSU survey - which, I repeat, looked at a trivial aspect of a professor's worth - is beginning to look pointless.

KSU, please read my patronising lips: academic appraisal is much more complicated than a survey on punctuality and "public speaking" (whatever that means).

Any decent university needs to figure out two things. First, to what extent, if at all, do its professors profess. Second, what measures are in place to make sure they do so. In our case, we might want to ask (since University thrives on taxpayers' money) if last year's salary increases have made a difference in these two respects.

Given my job, attempting to answer these three questions would be too embarrassing. I'll limit myself to fleshing out the questions. First, professors should profess well beyond the lectern. We need to ask about their research, their knowledge, their active collaborations locally and internationally, and probably their involvement in what are brutally called 'extra-curricular activities' (if I'm right the term should be blasphemous at University).

Second, audit structures need to be in place that establish broad-based academic appraisal as an ongoing process. Audit admittedly brings with it bureaucracy and a host of other problems, but there's no reason why it shouldn't be kept at a sensible level.

Which answers the third question. It's patent nonsense to say there has been no improvement since the salary increases. We are now expected to produce annual accounts of our work (again, in the broadest sense), for example. Rightly, showing up for lectures is no longer thought sufficient to make the grade. Life would be far easier - and much less interesting - if it were.

I'm not saying that all lecturers are 'good'. That would be an unrealistic, arrogant, and self-serving belief.

My point is that 'good' in the case of a University cannot be measured by a bunch of survey sheets. Those papers belong in the dustbin, together with the KSU's silly obsession with marketing.

mafalzon@hotmail.com