A teaching job in a college or a University is not preferred by brighter PhDs these days. Likewise, those who return from abroad also have their choices fixed: the top priority being for a position in one of the selective research institutions. Only if there are some compelling reasons, a few of the chosen university departments are considered as the next preference. If none is available, they do'nt want to come back or if they have already come back, would soon find their way back to the West. Only
very rarely does one come across candidates for teaching positions in colleges and universities who know their subject well or who enjoy teaching. Many happen to be teaching in colleges or universities because they could not find any other jobs. Or because after the minimum qualifying education, they happened to know somebody in the interview board.
Most state and even some central universities are not allowed to make any fresh appointments or even when the drill for new appointments is allowed, the long procedure and its unpredictability often results in a situation where the better candidates are no more available for appointment. If a relatively competent person does get selected through this highly stochastic event, the person finds himself
in the company of colleagues in a department who are a rather old and frustrated lot and, therefore, would not encourage the new incumbent to start good teaching and/or research programs. The Dept. or the University neither feels obliged to nor is in most cases endowed with adequate resources to provide at least basic material facilities or ‘seed money’ to let a new entrant start research work. In many developed countries, young faculty members are initially given less teaching responsibilities so that they can devote more time to set up their own research activities during the beginning years. However, in our system, young lecturers are supposed to take more and more classes, while experienced senior teachers are required to teach less. This leaves little time for the new faculty members to plan their research activities. If some enterprising faculty member does succeed in
getting a research project funded, implementation of the work plan and utilization of the approved grant invite more problems.
Recruitment procedures for teaching as well as non-teaching positions in nearly all the universities are cumbersome and not geared to hire the best talent for the job. The earlier practice of identifying a talented young person and offering a job straightaway is no more possible. The present system is riddled with the so-called ‘checks and balances’ to prevent misuse of authority. In recent years only a few universities in the country have adopted an open advertisement system and a wider involvement of departmental teachers in selecting a new faculty member. In most other universities, the excuse for not implementing such positive procedures are the existing rules and regulations, and the imaginary fear that such a freedom would be easily misused or subverted. Political and other kinds of pressures for selecting a candidate or even payment of money in lieu of securing an appointment are not unknown. This obviously is frustrating for the deserving candidates who get sidelined in the absence of ‘recommendations’ in his/her favour. Once a wrong candidate gets appointed through such means, the damaging consequences are faced by the department for life, since no one can in reality be thrown out of the ‘permanent’ job- the reason why many universities, as a matter of policy, have curtailed the number of tenure track positions.***
The ‘backbone’ money for all public universities and colleges comes from the state governments and the University Grants Commission (UGC). While the number of universities (and the so-called ‘deemed’ universities) and colleges in the country continues to increase rapidly, money available for the purpose with the state governments and the UGC has increased only marginally. Consequently, the limited money is spread ‘thin’ and much of this depleted money goes into the salary component. The available ‘revenue’ or ‘laboratory’ grants in most of the university departments and colleges are not sufficient to meet even the routine classroom requirements. Therefore, any money being available for research is a far-fetched desire. Nearly all research activity in universities/ colleges is dependent on individual research projects funded by various governmental agencies. In spite of substantial increase in the quantum of funds being available with funding agencies, the university system has not benefited to the desired level. A major cause is the
relatively poor level of ongoing research activities. Consequently, university academia often fail to compete with those from better-endowed research institutions. This traps the university teachers in a vicious cycle of poor academics, poor recognition and consequently poorer output.
Most of the funding agencies take a painfully long time to decide on the submitted projects and even after the project is approved for funding, getting the sanction letter and finally the money can still be a longer wait. Since most universities do not have the resources to ‘advance’ money to the Principal Investigator (PI) in anticipation of the funds to be released by the concerned agency, the research work suffers silently but significantly. In many cases, the research and other staff appointed on the project are not paid their emoluments for several months because the grant is not released by the agency on time.
Whether the fault is with the university administration (non-submission of the UC and SE in time) or at the door of the funding agency (procedural delays or simple carelessness), research work suffers and often leads to a resigned attitude on the part of the PI. In recent times, a number of schemes have been initiated to improve the infrastructure for research in university departments.
UGC provides support in the form of SAP, COSIST and UPEC, while DST initiated the FIST programs, which are expected to improve the much-needed material facilities for research. These programs have helped many departments to acquire some state-of-the-art facilities. However, in many cases, things may not have changed much beyond the acquisition step. There are several reasons for this unfortunate situation.
In my opinion, a primary reason for the absence of the desired improvement in infrastructure seems to be related to its different interpretations. Very often, more expensive and sophisticated equipment facilities are taken as a synonym for infrastructure and consequently I wonder if in the name of ‘infrastructure’, we have created only ‘superstructures’, which the intended beneficiaries are neither capable of handling nor maintaining.
In summary, the system, rather than being a facilitator of research activity, is by and large, inhibitory. This calls for a more serious oversight into the utilization of the funds provided.
Enjoy the rest of your week-end.
Thanking you,
Prof. Dr. Alex Abraham Odikandathil
*** Under the tenure system adopted as internal policy by many universities and colleges, especially in the United States and Canada, tenure is associated with more senior job titles such as Professor and Associate Professor. A junior professor will not be promoted to such a tenured position without demonstrating a strong record of published research, teaching and administrative service. Typical systems
(such as the Recommended Institutional Regulations on Academic Freedom and Tenure) allow only a limited period to establish such a record, by limiting the number of years that any employee can hold a junior title such as Assistant Professor. An institution may also offer other academic titles that are not time-limited, such as Lecturer, Adjunct Professor, or Research Professor, but these positions do not carry the possibility of tenure and are said to be "off the tenure track".
No comments:
Post a Comment