Good Faculty, Quality Teaching

A focus on quality teaching & learning, research & discovery, and outreach & engagement aiming to create, convey, and apply  knowledge to expand personal growth and opportunity, advance social & community development, and foster economic competitiveness, generally is the vision/mission of universities in today’s ‘Knowledge Society’ era. The main architects for achieving this noble vision are the faculty members who not only should be qualified to discharge their duties but also require to feel truly invested in, connected to, and committed to their institution and community. Equally important for them to be effective, is to demonstrate professional ethics in their pursuits continually. To have a committed and capable faculty with professional ethics, the need is to have an ecosystem which among other things should ensure the appointment of the “Best and the Brightest”, greater autonomy to the faculty to do their jobs as effectively as possible and recognition of excellence in research. Besides, treating them as essential ingredients of our socio-economic set-up by ensuring respect, dignity, and due role in shaping the socio-economic destiny, would act as a great motivator. However, holding them accountable for not delivering on basic norms will be highly critical for achieving the set goals.

The recruitment process that is in place is not foolproof to ensure that every time only the “Best and the Brightest” gets appointed. Although the regulator has tried to bring greater objectivity into the appointment process yet, the lack of seriousness on the part of selection committees and nepotism /favoritism continues to impede the selection of the best. What matters the most is the resolve and commitment of vice chancellors to ensure the appointment of the brightest which unfortunately is missing, though not widely. Given such a scenario, there is an urgency to embrace the world’s best practices regarding appointment and promotion of faculty. It would be in the fitness of things now to make Ph. D. with NET an essential qualification for the appointment of Assistant Professors with some minimum quality research output. Besides, the system of probation which was aimed to flush out the slippages if any at an early stage, has failed in its intended goal. Realising, this and other deficiencies, the new education policy has rightly suggested a system of multiple parameters for proper performance assessment, for the purposes of ‘Tenure’ i.e., confirmed employment after probation. Like in the western world, the confirmation of services after probation should be exclusively based on the ‘Students Reviews and Peer Reviews’. The need is also to revisit the existing API system to make it more meaningful by exclusively focusing on teaching performance in terms of student reviews and peer reviews by independent experts, innovations in course curriculum, quality research output, professional development, collaborative research, extension and contribution to the corporate body.

   

Once the best faculty are appointed, they need an enabling ecosystem for their growth and development, the salient features of which include; the availability of requisite infrastructure, competitive culture  and opportunities for growth and development. Systems of merit-based career management and progression would be a key to ensure greater commitment of faculty towards advancing his/her students, institutional, and their own professional growth. However, currently our universities are marred less by the availability of infrastructural facilities but more by the lack of greater autonomy and merit-based career management and progression. At the top of all this, the “Organisational Culture” mired by the  toxicity of lobbyism, infighting and internal politics is very much prevalent in the universities. In such organisations, people generally invest in cultivating close relationships with top authorities one way or the other or seeking political support rather than trying to earn positions/ promotions on the basis of his or her own merit at the huge cost of institutional efficiency.  Such an “Organisational Culture” is found more prevalent in those universities whose leaders lack ‘Leadership in Integrity’ and ‘Leadership in Excellence’. Such academic leaders find refuge in creating and revolving around coteries and sycophants who have rotten the basic foundations of such important institutions.

To take care-off the factors that lie behind low faculty motivation and commitment, NEP-2020 offers number of recommendations. The new policy without mentioning optimum workload, emphasises that the teaching duties should not be excessive, and student-teacher ratios also not too high, so that the activity of teaching remains pleasant and there is adequate time for interaction with students, and for conducting research. The current weekly direct teaching-learning hours for Assistant Professors and Associate Professors/ Professors are 16 hours and 14 hours respectively, should be reduced to 12 hours for all the categories, which should include 4 hours for research supervision/ mentoring for Associate Professors/ Professors and 4 hours for guiding and counseling for Assistant Professors. Besides, in no case, an Assistant Professor should be asked to teach more than two different subjects. The new policy also lays emphasis on the greater autonomy to the faculty in designing curricular, pedagogical approaches and assessment to offer them more freedom to innovate and be creative. The most important takeaway of the new policy is the emphasis on the recognition of excellence through fast-track promotion for recognizing high impact research, appropriate rewards, recognitions, and movement into institutional leadership. This will surely result into greater competitive culture within the institution, thus better output, provided it is formalised and implemented in an appropriate manner. For this purpose, a system of multiple parameters for proper performance assessment has been suggested, including peer and student reviews, innovations in teaching pedagogy, quality and impact of research, professional development activities, and service to the institution.

Faculty in the universities presently do enjoy academic autonomy, operated through a well established framework of Board of Studies, Academic Council and DRCs which are represented only by the faculty members. Faculty have the freedom to design their own curricular, pedagogical approaches, and assessments. But this autonomy foists greater responsibility on the faculty to use the authority granted for the greater good of the learners. Therefore, the question is ‘Have we used this authority responsibly and in a meaningful manner’? Unfortunately, most of the times, the faculty have been found wanting while using the ‘Academic Autonomy’ granted to them. In most of the cases, panel of experts nominated for these boards, or for evaluating theses generally includes friends rather than true experts. Have we ever made any attempt to adopt the best practices from the developed parts of the world. We continue to use the age old teaching pedagogy and assessment. Our assessment system continues to remain heavily weighted towards summative semester-end written examination which we all know is a test of memory thus, fails to assess higher order abilities & other qualities. The new trend happening, is that the Boards of Studies and Academic Council which are cornerstones for effective teaching-learning environment, thus by all means the most critical academic bodies mandated  to decide about academic matters after thorough debate and discussion. But unfortunately such critical decision making bodies  are being muffled to follow directions, coming from bureaucrats or some superficial committees. Strong urge to innovate and change for the greater good of the learners and the institution, unfortunately is found largely missing which has been the root cause for the failures to make greater strides in quality teaching and research by most of the HEIs. This sad state of affairs calls for greater accountability of the faculty and these crucial academic bodies.

In the introduction to NEP-2020, it is passionately argued that the new policy must help to re-establish teachers, at all levels, as the most respected and essential members of our society. But unfortunately, in the new policy there is no mention of how to re-establish teachers. Gone are the days when teachers were revered the most as were being considered an embodiment of thorough knowledge, intellect, integrity and selfless devotion to the greater good of the society regardless of caste, colour, creed, and status. A Million Dollar question for all of us is that why the contemporary teachers are not being looked through the same lens by the society today even though being more qualified than the teachers of olden days. The most prominent reason for all this has been that the teachers of the olden days were found immune to all sorts of toxicity existing in the society but unfortunately the contemporary teachers have lost that immunity, thus got infected from all sorts of viruses plaguing the society at large. Today’s teachers in general are lacking professional ethics and commitment to the greater good of their students and the society at large. Unfortunately these knowledge creators and disseminators have also been swept away by the wave of materialism thus have turned from “Selfless to Selfish Souls”. It is sad to note that to pursue their individual goals, the contemporary teachers are found to go to any extent regardless of its consequences for their learners and the institution. The university teachers consider themselves as ‘Intellectuals’, rightly so, as being highly qualified  people in the entire society, but the tag of  intellectualism foists a greater responsibility to stand for truth, equity, and justice which unfortunately is lacking in most of them, thus have rendered their intellectualism of little or no meaning for their students, institutions and the society.

The blame for all this alone cannot lie on the teachers but more on the society as whole. When the society at large has lost value for honesty, piety, justice and equity, therefore, it is unrealistic to expect the teachers to be immune to such social evils when they are the part and parcel of the larger society. But still, had there been no medaling in the affairs of these “Unique Universes”, the situation would not have been as bad as it is today. Like the western world, if the establishment would have allowed these autonomous institutions to function without interference, the situation would have been largely under control. Besides, the establishment which is mainly dominated by the bureaucrats, who unfortunately have failed to acknowledge that these intellectuals are capable to complement their efforts in finding plausible solutions to the various issues confronting the economies and the societies. This calls for the change of mindset of the establishment about these intellectuals by accepting the reality that they truly deserve a “Place of Pride” in public policy making like in the western world. Unlike the developed parts of the world, the role of technocrats is grossly missing in the governance, and is solely in the hands of ‘Parochial Bureaucrats’ who are ‘Jack of All Trades’ but ‘Masters of None’. Those who have the knowledge and expertise, have been rendered powerless for being labeled as mere academicians, but the fact is that they are specialists in their chosen areas of specializations, possessing “Intellectual Capital” which would be of immense use for the greater good of our economies and societies. However, conferring the “Place of Pride” to these intellectuals in public policy making will have to be with a ‘Caveat’ that the ‘Home of these Intellectuals’ i.e. universities would need total transformation by reinventing their operational methodologies based on the  world’s best practices in teaching and research. The onus for all this will lie on the Regulator/Government, however, the role of  ‘Institutional Leaders’ would be highly critical. Unless and until the leadership crisis with which these institutions are largely marred, not taken care of, instead of reclaiming a ‘Place of Pride’, these would decay beyond any repair.

Author is former Registrar & currently Professor in the Dept. of Commerce , University of Kashmir.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

sixteen + nineteen =