My article published in Alive magazine (a Delhi press publication in feb 2018)
According to a report by ASSOCHAM,
Indian students going abroad for higher studies cost a foreign exchange outflow
of $10 billion annually, an amount sufficient to open 20 engineering and
management colleges in India.
Over US$ 13 billion is spent every year by about 450,000 Indian students
enrolled in higher education abroad. Why do they go? It is not only for jobs abroad,
but also mainly for international environment, better research amenities,
flexibility in choice of subjects and wider choice of courses, practical
oriented learning methods, high quality of faculty and the state of the art
facilities. These are missing in many colleges in India.’ Almost two-third of our
universities and 90% of our colleges are rated as below average on quality
parameters,” Prime Minister Singh once revealed.
A vital indicator to ascertain the
global standard of the universities in any country is the number of foreign
students enrolled in them and their position in the international ranking. China
has emerged as the number-one choice for students who want to study in Asia. Beijing University has emerged as one of the top
20 universities in the world. It is a sad commentary on our higher education
sector that the recent evaluation of universities and
research institutes all over the world, conducted by a Shanghai university, has
not a single Indian University is in the
world's top 300 . However, China
has six.
The HRD ministry is worried about
the dissatisfactory quality of our colleges and hence has introduced series of reforms with the guidance of the
Knowledge Commission .The introduction of all the sophisticated western tools
of higher education, the establishment of additional regulatory
bodies and higher the flow of fund to
this sector have not yielded the expected results. The corporate employers say
65% of the engineering graduates are
unemployable, because, there is huge gap between what is expected from the
employees and what they are capable of contributing to
the productivity of the unit .
A critical factor in the reform
process is the quality of the faculty. The government is not blind to the need to improve the quality of the college
teachers and taken many measures, such as increasing the salary of the teachers
through the 6th pay commission , so that
teaching becomes attractive to brilliant minds , strict
provisions for recruitment, orientation and refresher courses, academic
freedom in restructuring of the syllabi, academic auditing, Performance Based
Assessment System (PBAS) and the pass in the eligibility tests etc., have been introduced to improve faculty
quality. UGC has sent the PBAS proforma to all varsities which will also
be free to devise their own PBAS based on it. Teachers will be able to offer
themselves for assessment for promotion once they fulfill minimum API scores. They
will also be able to get increments to the tune of 3 per cent of the Academic
Grade Pay (AGP) -- as outlined under the Sixth Pay Commission. the UGC’s
academic performance indicator is crudely is considered as designed and
childish. It is a mockery of the evaluation system. Under this, even a mediocre
academician can produce a ‘brilliant academic record’ based on books published,
papers presented, scholarly articles published, workshops and seminars attended
and research activities. The extent of ghost writing, plagiarism and hyping of
ordinary academic events in preparing the self-appraisal sheet is no secret.
Autonomous status has only helped college teachers excel in ‘window dressing’
methods. State governments have also been asked to amend their relevant Acts
within six months to enable implementation of these regulations. Lot of changes has come into the recruitment process too.
Yet the result is not as per the expectations.
The expectations
of the students and the administrators regarding teacher’s performance are very
high. The teachers are expected to be the
reservoir of knowledge in there respective subjects by constantly
upgrading their knowledge through various sources, use latest pedagogic method than relying on
uninspiring rhetoric, show interest in molding the personality of the students through encouragement for co curricular and extra curricular
activities, create a vibrant class room atmosphere through participative
learning method than teacher centric method, encourage original contribution by
students and thereby kindle logical reasoning, analytical skills, and enquiring
mind and inculcate reading habit among them . The
students want the teachers to be their friends, philosophers, guides and role
models .They want them to provide them carrier counseling too, through guidance
on additional skill requirements. The students feel such teachers only will
make their college education productive and prepare them for the competitive
job market.
However, the ground realty is very different.
Higher percentage of the college teachers does not possess these skills or the interest
to engage themselves with these roles. The orientation and refresher courses, the
eligibility test like NET and SLET, PhD degree, and participation in seminars
do not guarantee quality enhancement of the teachers. How many of the
teachers have chosen teaching due to aptitude for it and relish the idea of
accountability? Is not window dressing adopted on a large scale for better
grade in self-appraisal and accreditation procedures? How many of the teachers are
using the treasure of knowledge
available in the internet to provide latest information to the student and
engaged in presenting papers to the journals of international
standard? Do they give practical orientation
to their theoretical presentation? What care is given to test the communication
skill, aptitude for innovative teaching methods while recruiting teachers? It
would be disastrous if we appointed anyone who just came along and if corruption
plays a role in the recruitment of teachers.
“A bad teacher is like a time bomb,
because they would only continue to generate sub-standard students for decades”.
No responsible administration should tolerate this situation. Teachers are the
main link in the educational reform process. They are the field workers and
have direct contact with students. Nobility is still attached to their
profession and they are in charge of molding the character and knowledge level
of the youthful population. There is no use of having major share of youthful
population if they are not trained according to the requirements of the economy
The teachers should remember that
the born teacher concept is outdated. An ordinary teacher can become an excellent
teacher and then turn into an out standing teacher with dedication towards
their profession. Teachers forever should be learners and impart that knowledge
gained to the students with clarity and thought provoking manner. Original
contribution by students should be recognized and encouraged. More concentration
is needed on participative learning process. The teachers should talk to the students about
the changing world scenario in economic, political, and social matters.
The following measures
might help in improving the quality of the teachers.
·
The introduction of some mechanism through which
teachers performance appraisal done efficiently and accountability established.
·
The syllabus, which is not industry-friendly
currently, should be modified. The teachers and industry associations like CII,
FICCI should interact and find out what is missing in the syllabus. Nomination
of industry representatives in the board of studies should not be a window
dressing exercise.
·
Many supervisory bodies like AICTE unwisely
assume that once a teacher completes Ph D, he / she automatically becomes an
expert teacher. In reality, there is no direct correlation between research and
teaching ability. This point should be
noted while further reforms are introduced.
·
Even the refreshers courses and orientation
courses cannot achieve their purpose unless the concentration is on the latest pedagogic
methods than on monotonous guest lectures.
·
The government should rethink on the utility of
the eligibility tests in assessing efficiency of the teachers. The best thing
to do is to assess the teacher’s quality at periodic intervals. If the
assessment reveals poor quality, performance counseling should be given, grace
period for betterment allotted and suitable action taken after the next
assessment if the same position continues.
·
The teacher student ratio also should be
regularised .
·
Excellent
teachers with passion for teaching do not stay in private colleges
since, the gap between the salary at the entry level and at senior level in the
salary paid is too much between the private and government and aided college
teachers . This factor act as non motivation factor towards staying on teaching job . Since the private colleges salary is very low , it
has become a lender of the last resort in the job market and non interested and
low quality teachers only stay for a long time and the best ones opt for better
paying jobs. It is a major problem standing in the way of attracting high
quality teachers . such disparity in the pay scales should be rectified to
retain the best teachers
The teachers would say that with
autonomy, their work burden has multiplied due to the need to create and maintain innumerable records to please the
regulatory and inspecting bodies, which have multiplied, and their energy is
spent more on non-academic matters. Even the recent performance assessment system
is going to result in creation and maintenance of innumerable records and that
will further cut down their concentration on classroom activities, where the
students are waiting with altogether different type of expectations. The teachers form the final link in the hierarchy
of the higher education and they are the field workers. They feel that sweeping
reforms are introduced in the higher education sector, without involving the teachers
in the decision making process. Unless the grievances of the industry, teachers
and the students are addressed, the goal of attaining global competency in
higher education cannot be achieved.
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