Pankaj Jalote
Department of Computer Science and Engg
I.
jalote [AT] iitk.ac.in
The need for technical
education is growing rapidly in the world due to the changing economic and
industrial scenario which is increasingly becoming more high-tech, requiring a
higher level of education from employees and workers. In
Though for meeting the demand
for education, having private colleges is clearly required, so far these
colleges have, by-and-large, not been able to provide quality education. The
basic model for most of these colleges is to be a teaching-only place, with no
participation in any R&D activity. Consequently, the faculty they hire is
of lower educational qualifications. Most of the colleges will employ
graduates, with a few having postgraduate degrees, for teaching. Another
assumption in their education model is that if the syllabus and lecture notes
are set, then all the teacher has to do is to “speak them out” and the students
will learn. In other words, an assumption is that the teacher himself (herself)
does not need to have any expertise in the subject being taught. They only need
to know enough to be able to deliver the material in class. This approach was
taken to its limit in the franchise based education businesses, where lecture
notes, along with problems and homework, were made available to teachers, who
would just output this material in the class.
For any education, and
technical education in particular, this is a wrong model which will inevitably
lead to poor quality education. In general, for proper instruction, if the
teacher has to teach some material, then he must know much more than the material
to be actually taught. Only when one possesses advanced knowledge about a
subject does one understand the overall perspective and the role of basic
knowledge of that subject. So, for example, a teacher who has learned advanced
mechanics can appreciate Newtonian physics a lot better and can consequently
teach is better. Similarly, a teacher who teaches arithmetic can understand it
better and consequently explain it better if he understands algebra.
This basic principle of
education is almost universally followed in schools, with most schools
requiring graduation or post graduation for teaching children in schools.
Imagine what will be the quality of instruction in class IX, if the teacher
teaching mathematics or science was himself only class XII pass! And yet, in
many of these private technical colleges we have the situation where a student
may become a teacher soon after graduation and for the program from which he
has graduated!
In technical education, the
need for in-depth knowledge is even more acute. In engineering, relationship to
practice is what gives true understanding of tools, techniques, and concepts
that are taught in a course, as the basic goal of most of the courses is to
help apply concepts to solve some problems. Without this understanding of
relationship between the concepts being taught to practice, the material that
will be taught will be highly conceptual and unsuitable for training engineers.
To understand this relationship to practice, either the teacher should be such
that he knows the concepts and is also a practitioner, or should have much
higher and deeper level of knowledge in the subject such that linkages are well
understood.
Furthermore, in most
engineering disciplines, knowledge is dynamic and is rapidly changing. In this
scenario, it is not possible to provide any decent instruction through the use
of old notes the teacher made a decade ago. For instruction to be current, the
teacher must constantly update his knowledge. This learning for up-gradation is
hard and time consuming, and if a person is not a specialist in an area with a
good knowledge, it becomes almost impossible. Only a person who specializes in
an area and already possesses a good knowledge base about that area can
regularly upgrade the knowledge in line with latest developments.
One way to satisfy both these
requirements is for the teacher to be a researcher in the area in which he
teaches. A researcher, in order to produce new knowledge (the basic objective
of research), has to understand the past and recent developments in that area.
Furthermore, to have his work accepted will generally require review by other
researchers in the area – this ensures that the researcher has current
knowledge of the field and that his understanding is proper. In other words,
doing research in an area improves the understanding of the subject as well as
makes the knowledge current. This occurs, even if the research output itself is
not of top-quality. In other words, the process of doing research provides
these side benefits, which is quite independent of the actual output of the
R&D activity itself.
Another key factor why engaging
in research helps education is related to the quality of manpower. Generally
speaking, in today’s world, the best quality people require freedom in their
work and have a strong desire to “make a mark”. Both these needs cannot be
satisfied within a teaching-only institution, where scope of innovation and
creating something is limited. And both of these are well supported by the
research activity – the researcher has the freedom to select the problems he
works on, and through his research he creates new knowledge which is published
under his authorship. This is a very strong motivating factor and very good
people across the world sacrifice other benefits for academic freedom and
possibilities to create and innovate. In fact, these are the primary reasons
why the best people join top universities and research labs, and are the main
factors why people remain in such academic institutions despite more lucrative
opportunities elsewhere. It is safe to say that it is almost impossible to get
the good people to come as faculty in the teaching-only places, and if an
institute wants bright and competent people as faculty, that institute must
support and encourage R&D by faculty.
It is due to these reasons
that most
This high correlation between
R&D and teaching can be seen in the rankings and perceptions of various
Universities in the
This clearly implies that if
the level of education of our colleges is to be improved, an impetus must be
given to get some degree of R&D going in colleges and universities engaged
in technical and science education. Improving syllabi, or doing short term
teachers training programs, will only have an effect for a short time. For maintaining
the quality of education year after year, the teachers must engage in R&D.
At the very least, this thrust on R&D will require that these colleges must
be mandated to have all or most of their faculty possess post graduate degrees
in relevant disciplines with a certain percentage of faculty
having Ph.D.s in relevant area. It does not make any sense to have a B.E. teach
B.E. classes!
Emphasizing R&D may also
require a shift on how government grants are disbursed. It will be beneficial
to education if a portion of government funds for education are disbursed as
grants for furthering R&D through established processes of proposal
evaluation and submission of reports at the end. All colleges should be allowed
to complete for these funds so there is an incentive even in private
institutions to engage in research. In the
There is also an economic
implication of having a college/university engage in R&D, even if the
R&D activity itself is supported through research grants. For supporting R&D,
colleges and Universities engaged in technical education must account for the
effort a faculty will have to put in R&D activities and load the teachers
suitably. Clearly, if a teacher is required to teach a lot, one cannot expect him
to either engage in R&D or upgrading of course material. This is the
situation in schools, where teachers spend most of their time in teaching
related activities. But, for schools this is fine as they are dealing with
relatively “fixed” knowledge. Extending this model to technical and higher
education, which some colleges try to do to reduce their teaching faculty,
leads to outdated and low quality teaching. R&D can only be encouraged by
keeping reasonable teaching load – the level of teaching load being determined
by the level of R&D activity the university/college is
able/interested/willing to engage in. It goes without saying that R&D
encouragements should be done with proper safeguards such that faculty members
do not use it as an excuse to teach less, but not engage in any R&D.
Unless R&D is made an
integral part of colleges/universities engaged in higher education,
particularly technical education, education from these places will keep getting
further outdated and poorer. To improve the quality of education, the focus should
be partly shifted from improving education and syllabi in these places to
improving the R&D culture of these places. And to facilitate this, a big
impetus will need to be given to the production of PhDs in our country, such
that more Ph.D.s are available for faculty posts.
Pankaj Jalote is a Professor of
Computer Science in IIT