Good
Research Promotes Good Teaching
The Hon’ble HRD
minister’s statement making research optional for college teachers puts paid to
any semblance of quality improvement in Higher Education. The only silver
lining is that it is a Minister’s statement and not one of the Ministry’s policy decisions. Maybe his
statement is merely to provoke a debate on this subject.His statement addresses
two issues- one dealing with academic research by teachers in colleges and the
other with grade promotion using the API(academic performance indicator) score that gives weightage to research. The Minister
has retained the API score for promotion but given a huge leeway for teachers
to dispense with research in their disciplines. It is debatable whether college
teachers will rejoice in receiving this largesse from the Minister or feel a
sense of humiliation, loss of esteem and
unworthiness that the universities have no value for research undertaken by
them and that they are inferior to their counterparts at the university.
It is difficult to understand the rationale behind this announcement
especially at a time when higher education is in deep crisis today. The quality
and standard of higher education is far below the standard of world top
universities and the number of top class research papers from our universities
is pathetically negligible. There have been incessant discussions about the
strategies needed to raise the bar to make our universities come closer to world
class universities. But no visible improvement has taken place despite the
innumerable recommendations given by committee after committee, set up by the
HRD Ministry and UGC to improve the quality of input and output in our universities.
It is ironical why now no committee has been formed to analyze why all these
strategies have not yielded the desired result and why all the ministry’s men and women and
all the UGC’s men and women could not put universities back on its rail. But it
is not a rocket science to know why our universities are on a steady and at
times alarmingly steep decline.
1. The strategies that are being mooted are not by college and university
teachers. The university and the colleges get instructions from the UGC which
functions as His Masters Voice of the HRD Ministry. It is only the wearer who
knows where the shoe pinches. The teachers know what impedes institutional
progress and what remedies are needed to overcome them. To set our house in
order, we need the family members to deliberate the problems. How can members
sitting in their air-conditioned rooms far removed from the University and
college campuses, appreciate the
problems both of the teacher and the taught?
2. The political correctness has made our politicians and leaders promise to
open the university portals to all who desire to enter these hallowed gates.
But who has the daring to limit the university admissions to those who have
displayed their potential for pursuing higher studies? Instead of setting up institutions
to provide university recognized degrees in skill training, the present policy
of reservations in colleges to all those who wish to enter, have neither equipped
the students with job competencies nor made them acquire knowledge to pursue high-end
research, catering to society and present times. Higher education is not a welfare
measure to be distributed universally. The goal of higher education is to
discover new ideas, thoughts, concepts and theories that have a far reaching
impact for mankind. It was one researcher Martin Cooper who invented the mobile
phone that serves millions of people. While Edison invented the motion picture camera,
the Lumiere brothers invented the single device to combine film recording and
projection that provides maximum entertainment to maximum number of people. Three inventors ,Philo Farnsworth, John Logie Baird
and Charles Francis Jenkins created the
television that is enjoyed by viewers in
every part of the world. All inventions in medicine, astronomy, science, satellite
communication etc are by university researchers for the benefit of the entire
humanity. Higher Education requires
committed, inventive and gifted intellectuals who have the potential to make a
quantum leap into darkness and bring forth light. “Discovery
consists of seeing what everybody has
seen and thinking
what nobody has
thought" [Albert von Szent-Györgyi). It is no longer missing the wood for the
tree, but missing the tree for the wood.
3. This links the issue to the question of autonomy for institutes of higher
education. Since one shoe does not fit all, universities should have the
autonomy to decide courses, curricula, fee structure, examinations, admissions,
rules and regulations governing the different stakeholders in higher education.
The same autonomy has to be ensured for colleges, subject to the approval of
the degree granting university.
4. Any academic, worth being called
an academic will not rest content with what s/he had learnt as graduate
students. With the rapid advances in knowledge and still more rapid advances in
the use of technology in learning and imparting that knowledge, the academic is
under constant pressure to keep abreast
with the developments in theories, concepts, ideas and scientific experiments in his/her discipline. It is no exaggeration
to say that a good teacher is always a learner.
5. It is here we see the value of research. What our universities and
colleges lack today is quality research by its faculties where they co-opt
their students in their work. Javedkar’s announcement that teachers in colleges
need not do research but concentrate on teaching is like ladling soup from a
pot that has either no soup or has just remnants of old soup in it. An Indian Professor at Carnegie Mellon
University has pointed out how our industry is unaware of the fourth industrial
revolution that is happening all over the world and that is disrupting all old
industries on a global scale. This is sadly true of our academic institutions
where quite a few teachers are content to peddle with old antediluvian knowledge
that is of no use to the modern generation. The hard reality is there is a wide
range of technologies specially in the fields of Artificial Intelligence,
robotics, computing, genomics, cyber
security, sensors etc, that are changing
the lives of people and unless the students learn these developments, they will
find it difficult to be absorbed by industries. In Humanities and Social Sciences, we have
courses in International Relations, Development Studies, Peace Building,
Anthropology, Archaeology, International Jurisprudence, Public
Health Entomology, Disaster Management, Wildlife Conservation, Habitat
Conservation and Policy Making, Eco system, Special Education etc, that have an enduring bearing not only in terms of
career opportunities, but also gto ive students a glimpse into understanding
social responsibilities. For this the teachers should possess adequate knowledge
through intensive study and research. If teachers stop doing research and turn
out to be just good teachers carrying old hackneyed studies to the young
students, the whole system will generate mediocre graduates with no knowledge,
no skill and no competency to cope with
modern age demands and be job worthy.
6. Colleges are the transmission
lines to universities and employment. Raising the quality of education is
raising the intellectual calibre of the teachers, both of colleges and
universities. The last few decades have
seen an erosion of new ideas which are essential for the growth and development
of society. It is said that the last quarter of the previous century was a
post- idea period where our universities had abdicated their primary
responsibility to generate new ideas to meet the demands of a technology driven
society with its extended reach through mobile phones, television and new modes
of transport. Old values have become suspect and new values have not emerged to
replace them. The new generation, gadget- oriented without sufficient knowledge
of its advantages and disadvantages has fallen between the two schools of
thought- the old and the new. Research and guidance in research are essential
at all stages of higher education.
7. Making research optional for college teachers is cutting at the very
foundation of higher education. Research helps not only in gaining fresh
knowledge, it enables one to articulate this new knowledge with clarity and
lucidity. Javedkar’s statement closes
all options for teachers and their students to leap into the future and build
their competitive advantage with the rest of the world. It would have been a
new and salutary proposition if the
API(Academic Performance Indicator) had been revoked. Teachers have tried to
garner needed points at the API appraisal through spurious papers presented and
published for the sake of promotion to the next grade. Making research optional
is not a solution to end the worthless plagiarised papers by teachers solely for
the sake of API. It is like throwing the baby out while retaining the bath
water.
8. If quality improvement is the
goal, it can be accomplished by making research mandatory for all faculty
members, by improving the infrastructure necessary for research, by reducing
teaching hours that are currently stipulated at 16-18 hours per week to half
the number so that the teacher functions mainly as a catalyst and gives a capsule
of what is to be taught. This alone can encourage self study by the students on
the basis of those lectures. The teacher’s role is a three-in-one role, that of
a researcher, a learner and a teacher. There can be no distinction between a
college teacher and a university teacher. The bias against college teachers in
the university academia has to be removed. This new announcement of research to
be non mandatory for the college teacher is perpetuation of this bias that
makes them second citizens in the world of academics. It is also the surest way
of killing all incentives for self development besides lowering their self
esteem and making teachers divert their time to activities that are far removed
from academics.
9. Lastly, let me point out I had the privilege to preside over a college(Gargi
College) that had a host of brilliant researchers in physics and chemistry,
humanities and social sciences that gave it the distinction of a College with Potential
for Excellence . UGC bestowed a special grant to the college faculty to undertake
research and community service projects. The Department of Biotechnology, Ministry
of Science & Technology, Government of India awarded STAR College Grant. The college serves
as an illustrious example of how research nourishes both intellectual
development and self development.
I make the plea not to baulk college
teachers of their potential to pursue research as research alone can enhance the quality and standard both of
teaching and learning.
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