Do institutions celebrate teachers?

Just ten days ago, India celebrated Teacher’s Day. Teachers in India are definitely not at the top of the pyramid in terms of wages or in terms of national priority. The government’s teacher salary per-pupil-expenditure increased from Rs 1887 per pupil per month(pppm) in 2010 to Rs 3090 pppm in 2014 and further to 3430 pppm in 2015.

There has been an exponential increase in the number of enrolments but minuscule increase in the number of teaching staff in universities. This speaks volumes of the teacher-student ratio in the universities. I remember how I had started my career in India, teaching 60 students in a class and in a year’s time, the number of students in my class had gone up to 80. Contrastingly, I do not remember ever teaching more than 25 students in a class when I was a lecturer in Singapore.

I am pained to share that the teaching load for an average teacher in most of the undergraduate institutions is over 12 hours a week. As a teacher, one must spend at least four hours to prepare an hour-long lecture. That means that a teacher needs to have 48 hours in a day to do justice to the time he or she spends in the classroom during the week. To top it all, they are burdened with administrative activities that take their focus away from their main goal. A teacher hardly gets time to update her knowledge and skills on a regular basis.

Government policies have ensured that a university creates provision for faculty development programmes and it is factored in the NAAC rankings. However, several institutions ensure that these funds remain unutilized by making policies that make access to funds difficult. Several institutions keep faculty members employed under contracts or prolonged probation and do not offer professional development benefits to them.

There is a need to ensure there is adequate utilization of such funds. NAAC rankings must move beyond the ‘tick box’ approach and qualitatively assess the institutions. There should be negative scores for institutions giving extra teaching load to a faculty over reasonable hours as per global standards.

UGC had introduced a merit-based promotion scheme in 1982. It also had asked universities not to extend the time-bound promotion beyond 1995. The policy changes by UGC was a welcome move to ensure that teacher quality is maintained. There is now a need to ensure that the institutions create an affable environment for teachers that promotes their professional growth.

The government needs to encourage institutions to encourage their teachers. Research activities by teachers should not be seen as an addition to their role rather its integral part. To foster research culture, institutions need to reduce the teaching and the administrative load of the teacher. Younger teachers need to be given more time for building up their research experience and the senior professors should be involved more in administrative work.

The figure below shows that a meagre amount of Rs 11.45 crores was disseminated for research promotion to various beneficiaries. Further, Quantum of Assistance in Major Research Project in Sciences including Engineering & Technology, Medicine, Pharmacy Agriculture was Rs 20.00 lakhs and in Humanities, Social Science, Languages, Literature, Arts, Law and allied disciplines was a mere Rs.15.00 lakhs in the year 2018-19. There is a dire need to prioritise the teaching and research environment in India. If India has to emerge as a knowledge economy, it has to strengthen the teachers who are the backbone of this economy. The new National Education Policy 2020 has created new challenges for teachers whereby research and training of teachers will become a must for their survival.

Teachers lay down the foundation of a good society. With a growing presence of social media, and easy access to fake knowledge, a teacher has to emerge as a reservoir of true knowledge and wisdom. There is a compass inside all of us that guides us in times of challenge. This compass is being built every day with every experience. Teachers play a vital role in building that compass to shape the core. In today’s time of withering values, they are the prime patron of morality and ethics. It is high time that institutions recognize their role and align incentives accordingly.

(The writer works as Head, Centre for Insolvency & Bankruptcy, IICA)