Edu-leaders

This is not a solution. These days every undergraduate course has a student strength of nearly 200. It has several subjects. Therefore, the ratio suggested by the UGC is impossible to maintain. Moreover, the UGC gives the guide lines. It is not a binding for the states to follow them. Where the colleges come under state government and follow the UGC norms, the government has no money to implement the present scale. How does the UGC hope to have nearly three times the teachers strength in all colleges? If the UGC wants the high standard then it should not give the norms to the colleges and the universities. Since all the UGC degrees are equivalent, the marks are more important than the standard. The collelges and universities who aspire for the qualitiy loose their job opportunities in the UGC affiliated institutes. Now the UGC has introduced norms for the Ph.D. degree. All Ph.D. degrees should follow the UGC norms otherwise they will not get the UGC jobs. This is applicable to those who get Ph.D. from institutes abroad. Their degree may not be worth for the UGC jobs. The UGC must trust its own teachers and should not ask them to prove their competence. It is better that the UGC should not send norms because the state government implement a norm which is convenient to it and omit the other. The present norm will be one of them which will be most likely to be omitted.

enforcing student teacher ratio is almost impossible.nor has it got any scientific basis.how come IIMs have been succesful inspite of breaking this thumb rule

it is admitted fact that there is an acute shortage of quality teachers in the field of science and technical education.Most institutions do not have infrastructure/culture for reasearch and concentrate only of the class room teaching.In absence of reasearch and consultancy,the intelegentia is being underutilised.It is a welcome move of UGC.When a M.Ed teacher takes aproxy 28-30 periods out of 40 perieds in a weak, there should be no difficulty for a Prof to take 18-20 hrs workload per weak.The Astt. Prof/lecturers should be allotted 22-24 hrs direct teaching load out of 40 hrs a weak.After all why to waste intelectual property.To attract more competent stuff in teaching, salary of Prof/Asst Prof/Lecturers should be further increased.

This is a regressive recommendation wrt to most UG prgrams. Let's not forget that none of our university has appeared in recent list of top 200. This recommendation will make sure that none remains in the top 20,000 as well. Increasing the student teacher contact on academic and other issues is one of most imporatnt factors for education. Every students must feel being personally attended otherwise lots of talent and energy anyway gets wasted in our campuses. Look at the liberal arts colleges in USA. Most offer only UG programs and have an excellent teacher student ratio of even better than 1:10. Some good ones even offer a ratio of 1:8. The class sizes are really small. Even One to one tutorial sessions are a common teaching strategy. Indian studnets will envious of such system and will never be able to compete. Recommending an extremely poor teacher student ratio of 1:30 for Indian UG courses is making a cruel joke of higher education and singing the song as per the tune of administrators rather than aspiring to improve our education system. If we want to bring rigour and quality in all disciplines and at all levels, we must not differentiate between disciplines and UG/PG wrt teacher student ratio. If recommended ratio for PG program in media and mass comm is 1:10, it should not be poorer for other disciplines and for UG courses. India, with its aspirations, resources, and potential can certainly follow higher benchmarks. Academic rigour in our programs can increase only if we have a good teacher student ratio. Please refer "Academic Rigour in Contemporary Indian Higher Education: Some Questions and Reflections" at http://goelsan.wordpress.com/2010/11/25/academic-rigour-in-indian-higher-education/ We can have separate categoroes of teacher students ratio for institutes of different categories. To begin with, at least 100 of our top and wanna be top institutes must meet global benchmarks of 1:10 or better, even for UG programs. Institutes that fail to do so should not claim to belong to top category or ben an aspirant for that slot.