New Delhi: Faculty are the at core of any transformation of an educational system as they are expected to drive the changes. The system, therefore, needs faculty who are supportive, committed, empathetic, inspirational, and respected as “teachers’ and “researchers”. The educational system needs teachers who are in the profession by choice and not by accident.
India has great educational institutions and highly acclaimed teachers. But much more needs to be done. The NEP committee rightly observed that the system needs many more such “change agents”. There is a dearth in the number of faculty members who are truly inspirational and are of world class quality.
This was the background in which the NEP committee came up with certain recommendations for faculty members. However, unlike other areas, there were no specific recommendations for faculty members of higher education. Most of the recommendations were generic and ideal in nature.
Major Recommendations:
The NEP committee recommendations in this regard include the following:
Right Ambience: Educational institutes must create an ideal atmosphere and provide conducive ambience for faculty members to operate. These include adequate seating space, spacious classrooms, world class facilities like including library, teaching aids, computing labs, among others.
Freedom of Operations: Adequate freedom of operation and autonomy should be given to faculty members so that they can excel in teaching as well as research. They should also have autonomy in designing curriculum, pedagogy approaches and evaluation methods so that they feel empowered. Similarly, faculty members should be allowed to choose their own portfolio of workload in terms of teaching, research, administrative job, community service, etc. within the prescribed norms.
Selection Process: The system needs best of teachers; hence, the selection process should be transparent, and merit based, appointments should be tenure tracked and adequate compensation should be provided. Teacher student ratio should not be adverse thus allowing the teachers to devote adequate time to focus on self-development including research.
Career Upgradation: The promotion system should be merit based so that the right talent gets recognition. The HEIs should develop systems that are independent and transparent for recognition of talent among the faculty and providing them opportunity to grow not only as a teacher but also in “leadership roles”. The guidelines should be transparent and based on merit criteria.
Leadership Search: Outstanding faculty members with leadership potential should be identified at an early stage and should be groomed to take up the “leadership positions”. This will ensure smooth succession planning.
Treatment with Respect: Teachers are at the core of the educational system and they must be nurtured. The institutional leaders must ensure that faulty members are always treated with due respect and care.
IDP: The institutional development plan (IDP) of each HEI should cover the detailed guidelines related to faculty recruitment, tenure tracking, grooming, career progression, incentives, promotions, recognition, etc.
Current Stage of Implementation and Way Forward:
The recommendations are highly ideal ones and act as enablers for an ambience to create great teachers across the system. But the path is daunting because of prevailing well-known reasons. Many of the colleges are truly do not fall within the category of not-for-profit institutions and therefore, faculty may not be in their priority list.
The first choice of many young Indians is not to be a teacher. How to change the mindset that teaching is not only a “noble profession” but also a “rewarding one”, is a difficult task. Availability of research funds is the other area of concern; therefore, other allied reforms must take place simultaneously to make teaching an “aspired profession” and transform the teaching community into a truly inspirational role. Nevertheless, the committee has made the right recommendations in right earnest. It is now for the government, regulators, promoters, and other stakeholders to make the real changes on ground so that teaching becomes a coveted profession. If that happens, other things will follow.
The ground level reality, however, shows that there has not been any significant change in this regard after NEP recommendations.
The regulators have not come out with new significant policy measures to change or improve the reward / recognition system of the faculty members. The CAS system which by itself is not adequate and also lopsided, continues to be pursued by many universities and institutions.
There is no change either in the autonomy or portfolio choice by faculty as suggested by the committee. The high teaching load at every level of teaching is seriously impacting genuine research efforts.
At some places, teaching is suffering as faculty are only focused on research as that is the main driver for reward. Teachers are also burdened with administrative jobs leading to serious deterioration in both teaching as well as research. The situation appears to be confusing and much more needs to be done on the ground. Exceptions are those that already had better systems in place before the NEP came into picture.
Teachers are the real drivers of change in any education system. The reforms in the “physical”, “mental” and “psychological” aspects of faculty must be given the top priority by the regulators as well as management of institutions. Then only other changes will sustain. The country needs “outstanding teachers” for the higher education institutions for any meaningful contribution by the system to achieve the lofty of goals of Vikasit Bharat by 2047.
By Dr A K Sen Gupta, Founder and Convener, Higher Education Forum (HEF). He may be contacted at aksengupta51@gmail.com or 98211 28103.
