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It’s time we invested in our faculty

Higher education, especially technical education, saw a growth peak, in the last decade, plateaued off, a few years back and probably is now on a down trend. Alarming, but can see a reversal as well, if nuts and bolts are deciphered. What has hit the system? Large expansion, both in terms of institutions and students, has left the system gasping. Needless to say, we have one of the largest technical education systems in the world. Quality has been a palpable casualty. Skewed job situation has added fuel to fire, both creating a concoction that no one can gulp.

A teacher / faculty is central to an institutional excellence. A clear understanding of the why and the how of investing in faculty must be an integral part of the strategic planning process of an institution that aspires to be amongst the peers. In this context, how prudent is a decision to lower faculty student ratios in our institutions? What logic can rationalise this decision? Like multiple markets in consumer driven eco systems, should we also have multiple markets in education that cater to different qualities? If that be the case, why cry on quality levels nose diving?

A near total inclusivity in student participation, even given, that the GER is only 22, has put undue and tremendous pressure on the system, to respond to new expectations, like finding suitable teaching faculty in all our institutes, retaining them over long periods of time, providing them a facilitating mechanism to grow amongst peers and an enabling mechanism to prosper within the societal expectations. Creating adequate employment opportunities for almost a million youngsters graduating from our institutes every year, would virtually boil the conundrum. Industry would obviously employ the best of the lot and would device various filters to eliminate the hapless.

Ranking agencies would point out a great many gaps in the delivery methodologies. Value added courses, experiential learning, hands on skills, conceptual expertise, exposure to international practices, internships are all stressed upon. However, the teacher is the fulcrum around which struts for equilibrium can be buried. A teacher like any other professional, also needs to grow and excel in a highly competitive environment. Professionally, he needs avenues that he can explore easily. Albatross of nobility must be discarded for value for money.

Many of the professional colleges, unfortunately, don’t have the environment that motivates the faculty to do research. Unless the quality of research and knowledge created is of a high order, a paper cannot be published in a top-ranking journal and be cited upon by others. To write such a paper, faculty members constantly have to update themselves by reading, experiencing and experimenting with innovations, in inter and multi-disciplinary areas and create consultancy linkages with the industry. This ensures they don’t teach outdated stuff.  Research is a philosophy and a religion. It possibly cannot be thrust on an institution and its faculty. Enormous funding is required, facilities created and a research ambience provided so that the teachers are motivated enough to spend time in the laboratories. Regulatory overbearing will produce trash in journals that are also trash.

Institutes have a responsibility to create new knowledge. For this, they need to invest in faculty. This means providing them with supporting infrastructure and having a sufficient faculty development budget, a well-managed library, technology-aided classrooms, computers, software and unlimited internet connectivity. Monetary incentives for publication in reputed journals are important. They should also not be overloaded with teaching and should be granted paid leave for research. These initiatives call for adequate and adequately qualified faculty numbers.

Investigations reveal that many faculty members experience dissatisfaction in their work environments and typically become more dissatisfied over time. A longitudinal study by Sorcinelli in 1994 for example, found 33% of new faculty in their first year reported being very stressed. This percentage rose to 49% in year two, and went to 71% in year five.

Some reasons behind faculty dissatisfaction include, lack of collegial relationships resulting in experiencing isolation, separation, fragmentation, loneliness, competition, and sometimes incivility, lack of an integrated personal and professional lives, little or no feedback, recognition and/or reward, lack of a comprehensive tenure system, and unrealistic expectations and insufficient resources and support systems.

Typically, new faculty members work hard to compete for a full time or a tenure track faculty position. They negotiate their start-up, move to their new institution or a university and arrive the first day with high expectations for themselves and the institute or the university. The joy of landing the job is often replaced with anxiety as they start their new position. First year faculty members face many new challenges. The new faculty member must learn the procedures at the institution, university, teach their classes, and get their research program up and running. This could be a challenge.

Our institutions and universities must have orientation programs for new faculty, lasting, at least a day, the longer ones may be a week or two and some lasting through the first year. Besides these programs, universities need to develop formal and informal mentoring programs where new faculty are paired with senior faculty to help them learn the ropes. Faculty and administrators are a precious resource for universities. Providing professional development of these resources to enable faculty to improve their teaching, research and service capabilities benefits everyone.

Over the last half a century, major world events have prompted higher education institutions to develop internationalization plans for their faculty. All rating and ranking agencies levy a premium on internationalisation. In order to engage faculty in internationalization, higher education scholars and practitioners have recommended that internationalization plans include allocated resources, such as budgets for academic exchanges, faculty development workshops, and international curricular development and research grants. Only a few are privy to such largesse in our country. Even clustering institutions locally, and allowing faculty to spend a semester of teaching in partnering institutions which can raise the bar does not exist.

It is absolutely essential for colleges and universities to invest in faculty development at every stage of his/her career, so they remain current in their field; are able to translate their research interests into learning experiences for their students, are at ease with emerging technologies and pedagogies, can connect to other disciplines and are conversant with research on how students learn. Probably an integrated planning approach, linking academic, campus and budgetary planning, in ways that reflect the institutional mission and vision, should be a good idea. Exposure to international practices that a faculty gets is a must. In the face of general concerns about research grants, endowments which anyway are absent in our institutions, regional and international partnerships, it is critical that institutions take time to reflect on the job, faculty have at hand, that of teaching and learning.

Individuals participate in activities for which they are rewarded. Good institutions go through six phases of internationalization, like awareness, commitment, planning, operationalization, review, and reinforcement. All these are challenges and need adequate finances. This practice can stimulate faculty engagement in internationalization by providing critical infrastructure, incentives, and communication mechanisms to support faculty in integrating international dimensions into their teaching, research, and service to the community.

The strength and character of undergraduate programs in technology is in mathematics, physics and the various fields of science which will be recognized as primary indicators of the quality of a college or university. Most of our institutions tend to treat these building blocks, as “also ran”, reducing technical education to a farce. Hence making requisite capital investments in faculty and facilities in basic sciences are essential steps to achieving institutional distinction.

Significantly, faculty leadership must be recognised as non-positional, and that faculty leaders can generate and direct energy, are accountable for outcomes, base their action on information, create networking, build toward agreement, are emergent and flexible, are able to shape discourse and are willing to take risks.

Finally, we need to realise that faculty is the strength of an institution, it’s the face to the world, and eventually, the sum total value addition which it does, to the intelligence quotient, of the universe. All available studies have shown that any investment that is made in faculty in particular and education in general, has not done any harm to any country’s image but has only enhanced the same in the comity of nations.

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