Encouraging Faculty Development Programs With Dr. Jayant Sonwalkar

It is very important to focus on faculty development. The elements of the education system include building infrastructure, the teachers, and the students. After that comes the supporting environment like computers and libraries.

Out of these three elements, the faculty is the most important one. If you go back to the gurukul system of Indian education, there used to be competitive exams to get into the Ashrams of the Gurus. The Gurus used to have the complete right to accept or reject a student.

A mechanized system was then implemented by the Britishers and over the years, in the pursuit of teaching, we have become mechanized due to this, we forget to revise our syllabuses.

Earlier it used to be done every 5 years, and now, because AICTE has mandated that it should be revised every three years, it is taking place more effectively.

The students must get the latest knowledge and that the latest knowledge has to be delivered by the best faculty. If the faculty themselves are not ready or are not trained enough, the students won’t attend their classes.

This is why we end up hearing from the teachers that the students don’t attend their classes, and they only start coming when the exams are close.

This is not the case in UTDs and IIMs. In these institutions, all the students come to class and the attendance is 85-90% just because they have better faculty. Therefore, if the faculty is good, most of the problems of the education system will be resolved.

We need to pay the utmost attention to faculty development programs. Another suggestion which I also proposed in the National Economic Policies meeting, which was a meeting of about 700 Vice-Chancellors; was that faculty from practical sectors like engineering, management, etc., must be sent back to the industry every five years, for one year. After this, they should come back and teach.

This is very important because if the faculty is not exposed to current technologies and trends then s/he won’t be able to provide relevant information to the students and train them effectively. It’s just like a doctor who practices surgery but cannot operate a patient. If a doctor is more bookish, he will not be able to diagnose the patients correctly.

That is why it is imperative for the faculty to train themselves every five years and to update themselves on their knowledge.

There are multiple reasons for this. If you talk about private institutions, they cannot leave their faculty because the faculty here does everything other than teaching, like keeping records, and all other such tasks. So these institutes don’t wish to lose their manpower for a month or so. 

In government institutions, people are lazy, the teachers don’t want to go, or the HOD doesn’t want his teachers to go and he allows only his favorite teachers for such programs. So, there is a lot of politics that goes on. 

Another thing which I have observed is that when the female faculty members get settled in their lives and have kids, they restrict themselves from growing and developing further. 

They hesitate to do this because if they go and learn new things, they will have to teach new classes. Be it male or female faculty, nobody wants to get out of their comfort zone. They don’t want to learn new subjects. 

There are certain compulsions already in existence. Once you become a lecturer, and unless you attend two long time faculty development programs, of 21 days, authorized and certified by UGC and AICTE, you cannot get promoted to the position of an associate professor or leader. Similarly, you need to attend two more to be promoted further. 

Also, what happens in these programs is that there are groups from different subjects and there is a mix of people. Thus, a very non-specific program is conducted. The faculty development programs should be more specific and workshop based, where more practical work is done.

Like in IIMs, they used to have faculty development programs of three months but now they have reduced the tenure to one month; even in one month, they teach the faculty for 6-8 hours and provide exercise or homework for 4 hours a day.

Unless the faculties themselves get sincere towards these kinds of programs, it is very difficult to develop them. It is always a two-way process, the faculty should be eager to learn and their teachers should be able to train them well.

This eagerness should arise as a result of the competition itself. If my colleague is performing well, I should do even better than them. If this kind of healthy competition gets into the faculty development programs, then it will become an automated process. 

The new policies do take care of this. They have reduced the period of the programs and have made it compulsory for the faculties to attend these programs in every 2 to 3 years.

Certainly changes in the policies have been made but are they enough for the transformation of institutes?

If we look at it, the faculty development program is more than just for developing education and the students. It is for the betterment of the faculty themselves too. So, should we be motivating the faculty to improve themselves?

Yes, absolutely but unfortunately, there exists a kind of lethargy in many of the Indian faculties. I am very much Swadeshi, but still, I see that the lethargy is the highest in Indian faculty. They think that “My salary will remain the same for the next 8-10 years as an associate professor then Why should I work hard?” 

So people don’t put in the extra effort. “If others aren’t doing so, why should I?” is their mentality. A change in this should come from within.

If you see, the number of researchers has gone down in universities because of this. They think that they have a Ph.D., so why do research now?

Thus, UGC made it compulsory to write two papers before the Ph.D. is awarded. Still, some faculty members will write two papers and stop. Research work should be done for personal and professional satisfaction, not just for the sake of doing it.

I met a 50-year-old faculty from the finance department on my trip to the US. Later I came to know about her, that in the 30 years of her career, she has written 45 books, 200 research papers in US Journals, she was the editor of 10 journals, and she was publishing two journals herself!

If we start writing a paper for the US journals, we take from six months to a year to publish them!

When I checked the profile of that institute, I saw that almost all the faculty has 20-30 books in their name and nearly 100 papers.

“When someone decides to excel not only among their colleagues or in their state/country but also globally, only then development takes place.”

The government is trying hard to make universities globally known but the biggest hurdle is lack of research work.

I agree, that research is one of the hurdles in our path and it is stopping us from becoming global platforms. As per you, what steps should the government and the institutes take to make research a more sought after thing? 

I think people in research are starting to do well now, thanks to the policies and awareness. As per the statistics, for the last two years, the articles from Indian authors in international journals have increased to 40%! All thanks to Government policies!!

Not only should we start writing good articles in international journals, but we should also start publishing international journals, by making a global editorial board. 

When UGC made it compulsory to publish two articles every year, even though that policy was no longer in existence, at that time, a lot of Indian publishers mushroomed. Even from a small city or taluka, they published international journals.

We need more than just this. We need to have an international editorial board, an international reviewer board, and then if we publish journals, we will grow very rapidly.

I am very optimistic about my approach, and I think the number will increase very fast and things will improve.

 With that being said, a lot still has to be done.

The biggest hurdle in writing research is that there is no hand-holding being done. Senior professors don’t guide their juniors. 

One of the toxic things in the Indian psyche is personal jealousy. This is much more in India than in any other country and it is highly visible in their behavior.

The senior professors feel that their junior will excel and move ahead of them if the junior completes his/her Ph.D. and writes in an international journal. Finally, tomorrow the junior will become their competitor. 

When you are already an established professor and you have your path of growth, how will anyone cross your path?

They should feel confident about themselves. It is their job to train the younger generation to write better and publish better journals. The openness of the mind should come with the senior faculty members and they should give a lot of time in hand-holding and training their juniors.

The pandemic is transforming the way we see education. It has opened up ways for virtual classrooms and distance learning in colleges. What is your view of open learning and distance education post COVID era?

We are currently in the COVID era and are passing through it. 

There were times when people were not using online transactions, and due to Modi Ji’s efforts, Paytm overnight became popular. Similarly, in these times, apps like zoom or google classroom have automatically become very popular. 

I have been fighting for universities to go online for the last 10 years and that is why when I became the Vice-Chancellor of this open university, I was very happy.

It was now my turn to make my university go online. This is God’s gift and a blessing in disguise. 

You must have heard that in the last few days our finance minister announced that 100 universities are to be given sanction to start online programs. 

If each university starts 35-40 courses, 4,000 courses are going to be offered very soon and our country will be full of online programs and online courses.