Academic faculty, a hindrance to Education reform: Prof P Balaram
September 3rd, 2009
Following is an excerpt based on a report in The New Indian Express:
Academic faculty within institutions have proved to be a big hurdle in ushering in changes in the research universities in India, charged Indian Institute of Science (IISc) Director Prof P Balaram .
Speaking at the Indian Institute of Astrophysics here on Tuesday, he said, “What we have found is that opposition to reform comes from academic faculty members within the institute, who are more comfortable maintaining the status quo.”
Prof Balaram pointed that in the ranking of world universities by the Shanghai Jiao Tong University, IISc was the best performing Indian university ranking between 300 and 350.
He also pointed that in 2003 the institute’s ranking was between 251 and 300. “So does this mean that our institute is going down, or that other institutes are going up, or that we are going up slower than other institutes,” he asked.On steps to improve research in Indian universities, he said that academic faculty members must be open to the idea of change. Besides this, institutes need to get their administrative structure sorted out. “Right now, we are at a stage where there is a lot of interest from the political class to strengthen the higher education system,” he said.
Prof Balaram also said that ideal universities must include teaching along with research, both at the undergraduate and post-graduate level.
“Teaching and research are two sides of the same coin. Unfortunately, today universities have restricted themselves to teaching just post-graduate courses,” he said. Prof Balaram also lamented at the fragmentation of disciplines at traditional universities.
“In Karnataka for instance, we now have a specialised university for law, engineering, medicine, Ayurveda, and music. The traditional university is now restricted to just basic sciences and humanities, essentially leaving it to be ignored,” he lamented.
Entry Filed under: Cross-cutting topics,IITs, IISc, IISERs, NISER, IIMs
6 Writeup
1. Sanjib Karmee | September 3rd, 2009 at 10:10 pm
Prof. Balaram has expressed my feelings. I can say that in India faculties from IISc are much more opposed to the education reform. The research standard of IISc is also going down day by day. To some extent, Indian education system should try and come out from the current compartmentalized system. However, some old folks will oppose this idea. In my view the govt should provide all the required faculties to IITs, IISc and Central Universities for research and teachings, and then every year it should review their performance. Otherwise we will be no where. We should try and put as many as Institutes from India in the world top 100 list of Universities. For this we need initiative from both sides, i.e. Govt and academicians.
2. Chitta Baral | September 5th, 2009 at 12:50 am
An opposite viewpoint:
Nice op-ed by IIMA Prof. T T Ram Mohan on why IITs and IIMs need not immediately broaden to full-fledged universities. http://bit.ly/L33Bz
3. R.K. Ghosh | September 5th, 2009 at 1:17 pm
It is now a fashion among heads of the Indian educational institutions to pass buck on to their faculty. It is not clear what the academic reforms Prof. Balram is talking about? Is it like the one Prof Yashpal committee recommended or the one that MHRD has throttled down by an ill conceived vote bank oriented reservation policy ? We are already having classes of size 100 or so for professional courses and 500 in core courses. Does he want to reduce this bandwidth to level even lower for the students? No one afraid of review specially in institutions like IITs or IIMs. But what reviews are in place for directors? Why can n’t they be brought under a review scanner? It is a common knowledge that no one can become a director/VC unless he/she listens to MHRD bureaucrats and the minister.The amount of lobbying that goes on during selection of directors is seen to be believed. There are many extraneous reasons other than academic achievements or the vision for academic reforms that decides who can become head of an institution. Those who are not a part of the system can not really understand the political and bureaucratic long handle exercised over IITs or IIMs. So, an outside observer can easily fall prey to rhetorics of directors and VCs. Why many heads of institutions could manage 2 terms. It is astonishing that a country of one billion can not produce 1 noble academician for every institutions every 5 years. India does not have 5000/6000 universities/institutions like China. The real trouble is a caucus of bureaucrats, and few lobbyist among academicians who make sure that only professors belonging to the caucus can get positions of directors. Prof Yashpal committee want IITs to turn into Indian Institutions of Everything (IIE) and become a university so that UGC can control it and these institutions too quickly fade into oblivion much like rest of the other Indian universities have. So dismissing the objections of academic faculty by sweeping rehtorics could only sound death knell for places like IITs, IIMs and IISc or TIFR.
4. Sanjib Karmee | September 5th, 2009 at 10:08 pm
Both Prof. Balaram and Prof. T T Ram Mohan are correct to some extent. IITs were created to cater the Science and Technology of the country. However, after looking at its success the government has started cloning this institute to many other specialized Institutes like IIMs, IIITs etc. As a result now we have many compartmentalized Institutes. From the current scenario, one thing is clear; in India we do not have a successful University like other western countries. Because of this we are always comparing IITs with Vedanta Uni. etc. And we are skeptical whether Vedanta will be a successful University or not. Simply, in India there is no good university which can serve as a model for other Universities like IITs was a model for IIITs and IIMs. Now, the question is what should the govt do? Should it expand IITs and other good universities or should it go for new Universities which can become world class?
One solution is to promote project like Vedanta, which has the potential to become a best University in the world (at least it looks like that). Once we will have a successful University no one will talk about converting IITs to Universities. Till then this discussion will go on for some time.
5. Chitta Baral | September 5th, 2009 at 10:18 pm
The govt. is creating 14 new universities which they aim to make world class. They are variously referred to as national universities, innovation universities etc. The bill is being drafted and these universities should start class from 2010 in temporary digs. See http://www.orissalinks.com/archives/category/india/central-universities/wccu for the coverage on them.
6. Sanjib Karmee | September 6th, 2009 at 4:39 pm
Govt. should forget about expanding IITs and IIMs. Let them be specialized Institutes. The central govt should model the proposed National Universities like ISB. Increasing the salary of faculties and research scholars will have a huge impact on the out put of the Institutes. Otherwise these proposed national universities also will be like central universities.