We do have a poor status of higher education in India. Ministry of Human Resource Development has been taking number of steps like pieces of a gig-saw-puzzle which do not fit in to make a total picture.
“46% faculty posts vacant in government aided engineering colleges (in Rajasthan)” says TOI of 30th May 2017. The scenario is similar in the government aided or government institutions across the entire country. And private institutions are no different – have the same function to perform and the quality faculty position is no different. The qualifying guidelines in terms of Ph. D. requirements or publications in journals and years of experience are not enough. A person satisfying such parameters may not make a ‘good faculty’ and a person without these guidelines may make a ‘good faculty’. To be a good faculty one needs a zeal to connect with the students, walk an extra mile and deliver the desired content.
Quality faculty cannot be produced instantaneously, it cannot be imported either. We have to develop our own mechanism based on training/retraining and deployment/redeployment.
However, in the present scenario, the MHRD needs to take some pioneering steps. The AICTE has already come up with a syllabus be followed by institutions. Gaps in it, if any, may be filled up quickly. A time table for content delivery may also be initiated by the AICTE. And the courses may be delivered on line by the subject experts which we have. All the higher education institutions have to have a system to ensure content delivery to its students as per the time table. The faculty at individual institutions have to take care of tutorials, workshops and labs etc.
A common ‘exit examination’ is imperative to ensure that we do not produce professionals which are not employable. In an earlier blog it has been pointed out that we are producing a sea of ‘not fit for employment’ professionals as such.