Edu-leaders

The impediment on the path to 30 percent GER in India is the scarcity of teachers. As far as I comprehend, there are two main layers to this faculty scarcity problem—one exists at the pre-secondary level, while the other at a higher education level. And together, both these layers feed the holistic problem of the GER gap (between India and the rest of the world). As much as it pains me to admit it, currently, in most of our colleges and universities, teachers don’t really contribute to the understanding of a subject, or promote self-learning and selfactualisation. The rote model of teaching and learning only makes our youth unable to cope up with the pressures of professional reality–or develop an analytical mind. What could be done to redeem the situation? Well, for one, seek a change in the academic conscience—teachers and educators themselves need to learn throughout their lives. Pursuit of knowledge is endless after all.

And, educators need to invite and invoke interest in a subject to help the youth develop a platform for doing things differently, and doing it on their own. The education system must learn to accept that every question may not necessarily have uni-linear answers—challenges in life don’t manifest themselves in that way. Originality needs to be promoted and out-of-the-box thought needs encouragement. Teachers need to actively participate in student and career counselling. And, the education system must empower the educators to participate in the counselling sessions, or in discussions involving the youth’s future–a process usually governed by peer and parents’ decisions. Unfortunately, the problem of the shortage of faculty that we wish to address right now, has been steadily getting worse for the past 15 years now. Any short-term initiative cannot bridge the gap–not even in 50 years’ time. We, over the past few decades, have been trying to deal with the problem. If there were some easy way out, we would have found it. In the meantime, the shortcuts have made us realise that any “easy fix” will only worsen the quality of higher education. But we need solutions. And, in a resource-starved nation, such as ours, the solutions need to be pragmatic and capable of changing the status quo.

The first solution will be  making ICT enabled methods of teaching available to students. This may, to some extent, take care of the scarcity. Another option is to experiment with the concept of apprenticeship—help students assist senior educators. Youth involved in undergraduate, postgraduate and research may be roped in to fill the lacuna. Even today, participants enter the teaching profession out of respect—there could be no other reason, as we have failed to make the profession a viable career. A long-term solution would be to isolate faculty members from pressures–create a mechanism for performance-based pay structure. And provide training in teaching and learning pedagogy alone. Mostly, effectiveness of teaching is a better motivator to students than the content.

Every faculty member, even if qualified, must spend (either in undergraduate, postgraduate, or at doctoral level) a year teaching or assisting a teacher. The idea is to mentor the future mentors. The training should come from trained and experienced faculty. Lessons should revolve around the ideas of effectiveness in teaching and learning. Then only should a participant be appointed as a member of a faculty. Teaching is perhaps the only profession where no formal training is really necessary for being employed as a faculty—it has, however, the potential to irreparably scar a career! I can only speak from experience and explain how we do it at Sharda University.

Here, we try to follow a “rigorous method” of selecting faculty. Inexperienced members are recruited as teaching assistants and allocated with a senior member. The university follows an “assessment schedule” for teachers–where student’s feedback is an important component. Some of the best faculty members are given advance increments and promotional rules are performance based. For faculty recruited from around the world, a PRP (performance-related pay) component is added to the base salary.

Teachers are provided ample facilitation to use ICT-enabled teaching pedagogy in classrooms and the lectures are simulated to provide a feel of real work environment and design concepts. Research and development activity is encouraged—also providing job satisfaction to the international faculty. Above all, the faculty has the freedom to design and change curriculum and introduce courses during summer term. Such flexibility, freedom to innovate and empowerment encourages the educators to give their best. Institutions mostly get faculty who are migratory, hopping from one institution to another for more money. Poor incentives lead to members who have poor communication and computer skills. It is important to devise a simple method for selecting faculty. Faculty coming from institutions of better repute, may be considered for a pay hike. Faculty coming from institutions of equal repute may only be recruited with full pay protection. Result; this would (hopefully) discourage cross migration and bring in a semblance of quality consciousness among faculty. No faculty should be recruited without making a presentation of their communication skills, clarity of thought and expression. Their commitment (to teaching) must be given credence to. He or she ideally should be encouraged to conduct research on his or her own and assist students in industrial projects—creating a second layer of future mentors.

These changes soon reflect in a classroom. If teachers are respected then students, too, start considering the profession a viable one, one that they could opt for in the future. The government, on its part, must not strictly regulate the pay package. The minimum guarantee needs to be fixed, but institutions willing to pay more for deserving candidates, through their own resources, should not be discouraged—the same goes for government institutions. Let’s get pragmatic. The root cause of this (faculty) scarcity, and the vacancy problem, even in the IITs, is economical—and by pretending anything otherwise will only delay solutions further. The need of the hour is to seek innovative, alternative methods of teaching and encourage more youth to participate in the process by making it a viable profession that is both respectable and paying.