Improvements in Higher Education – V

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Faculty

Subsequent to permitting private players to enter the higher educational arena, over the last decade there has been a proliferation of educational institutions in India. It is a profitable business and many an enterprising shopkeeper, hotel owner, primary or high school owner, politician etc. has jumped into the business. It may be imagined the resulting quality of such private education cannot be of a very high quality. Hopefully this is only a preliminary situation and the scenario will improve in future. Innovative regulation would be required to improve quality. This is what the present series of notes is about.

The arenas of education that private players have entered are the most profitable ones such as engineering and management education. With the increase of educational institutions a serious shortage of qualified faculty has emerged in areas such as engineering. This has led the regulating authorities to lower the required qualifications of faculty to an insidiously low level. In effect what has happened is that the qualifications required to become a faculty member of an engineering college is even less than that required of a primary school teacher. A primary school teacher is expected to be more than a graduate with additional qualifications such as B.Ed. and often also post graduation. On the other hand the majority of engineering faculty in private engineering colleges in present day India are fresh young graduates. Biding time until they find another job.

In future as a greater number of higher qualified faculty becomes available, the situation is expected to improve. At the present stage what needs to be done is to ensure that no permanent damage is done to higher education in India. One of the ways is to differentiate properly between adequately qualified faculty and temporary teaching assistants. A fresh graduate should be regarded as no more than a temporary teaching aide rather than a full-fledged faculty member or Professor. If this is not done the very concept of a Professor in the country is denigrated. The following practice is recommended for designations of teaching personnel and it is proposed that it is ensured through the regulatory framework:

Teaching Aides (Non Faculty) Minimum Qualification: University Graduate

Teaching Assistant
Instructor
Senior Instructor

Non- Professorial Faculty, Master’s degree in the required Professional Discipline


Lecturer
Senior Lecturer

Professorial Faulty, Minimum Qualification: Doctoral Degree in required Professional Discipline and depending on experience the ranks may be,

Assistant Professor
Associate Professor
Professor

It is a travesty to designate a faculty member without a doctoral degree into the Professorial ranks. A Professor is expected to supervise research towards creation of new knowledge and to design new curriculums. The minimum qualification required for doing that is a doctoral degree.

Classical faculty designations such as a Reader may be discarded by all but the classical universities. It is necessary that these recommendations for faculty and non-faculty designations are specified at the earliest because once a person with low qualifications is specified as a Professor he cannot be reverted to a lower rank. It is a designation for life. If appropriate control is not exercised now it may lower standards of higher education in the country for a long time to come.

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