The chairman of Tamil Nadu Virtual University says the problems in our higher education is due to the fact that the bulk of the teaching-learning process is done in affiliated colleges and not in the university campuses; that 84% of the faculty are not expected to do research.
I disagree.
Of course, many affiliated colleges are bad, BUT--
Many affiliated colleges do a better job of teaching undergrads than do the university constituent colleges. One reason is the market forces. The private affiliated colleges are totally self financed. They have to compete for student admissions and fill up their seats and they have to be good enough to attract students willing to pay the high tuition fees charged by them. Their students must get admission into good institutions for their PG or get good jobs. Hence they are under pressure to perform well and get a good reputation.
The university our college is affiliated to, has a few good professors, but the bulk are in for political reasons. There are many faculty members in the parent university who are really bad academically. The quality of research, barring a very few, is quite pathetic.
The appointment of key functionaries of the university is governed by politics.
There is a resource crunch and the university research scholars do not have access to many journals-- most equipment is lying useless--under repair for years; very little money to order chemicals.
Finally, I do not believe that research skills is necessary to teach undergrads. The need is to make the students understand basic concepts of the subject thoroughly before they pass out of the college. For that what the teacher needs is good communication skills and a good understanding of the basics of the subject s/he teaches- and a lot of patience.
Post graduate students of course need to be taught by people involved in research-- or so you would think. My short stint (three semesters) at teaching MSc students in my college has made me believe otherwise...they are absolute dummies....literally...no response in class- no questions-not even a lifting of an eyebrow or a nod to indicate I have been heard... they sit like they are a few mannequins placed to look like I am taking a class.(The undergrads are not that bad....every class has at least 5 -10 students who ask questions, are willing to read up ...) These PG students were from the biochemistry department and I was teaching spectroscopic methods to them.... I used to slog over my lecture notes for hours before each lecture taking care to provide biochemical examples....sheer waste of time.... all they needed were notes...you give some notes, they learn and reproduce in the exam.
Now what research skill do I need to do that? All I needed to do was open a book by one Dr Satyanarayana, or maybe one Dr Wilson, rewrite a few pages in simple language and hand it out to them. I just need to be literate --that's all.
8 comments:
You raise some highly pertinent issues. One is that of research not being a necessary qualification for undergrad teaching. This seems true in the current scenario, however, I still think it is far from the best situation.
Another issue that you point in the last few lines is that about students. The thought of having to teach an unresponsive class can be scary. Having been in one as a student, I am dreading the idea of having to move across the table. In my opinion, a change in the examination pattern and reduction in the number of courses are two ways which could be very effective in forcing students to abort this 'dummy'ish attitude. There is no thumb rule for this, of course.
The change has to come from when they are young-from school, children should be encouraged to ask questions if they do not understand what is being taught-or even if they just want to know something. Secondly, being participatory is hard work..you have to read up what is being taught...at least the subject covered in the previous lectures- which no one is willing to do.
True, especially about reading up. I have been guilty of never preparing for class. Am learning it now, never too late I guess.
Well it's students who don't prepare that make our life easy...if students don't read up, we too don't have to read up much.
I enjoy reading your posts. It reminds me of my old college days very much. I can definitely understand your griefs.
@RS, Well, it seems to be similar everywhere in India. But it's also really enjoyable at times--specially when old students came and meet us.
sure. I still enjoy when my old students find me and write (and it does happens times after time). I poured my heart while teaching and it was mostly fun.
What I completely dread about Indian education system is lack of creative freedom and local departmental politics of very low level, and also with time quality of students are continuously in decline as pure sciences are least priority among students. Other major problem in our college was to expect from faculty useless administrative jobs.
RS: Yes your experience seems to be similar to mine here. But I joined this college when it was started. So I have a ring side view of the process of building a college and this is fascinating...we did admin jobs regularly,we still do. We also did a lot of odd jobs when the college was in its infancy, but never minded it...it was OUR college!. Now I would not do any of those jobs and thankfully, I don't have to. But doing the admin jobs is not bad...it again gives you a sense of belonging to the organisation...a partnership. I think it all depends on the way you are made to do the admin jobs, not the jobs per se.
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