So here's something that many may not know:
Apparently, as per the University Grants Commission (UGC)
framework [UGC is the body that governs most Indian universities and colleges]
a person who has just entered the teaching profession is required to take the
highest teaching load (this could be as much as 3 courses in a semester at some
places) and the more senior people take lesser teaching loads (say 3 --> 2
--> 1 as one goes through his or her promotions).
Now if at all there has to be a variation in teaching loads based on seniority (and I don't believe there should be any) this is exactly the opposite of how it ought to be.
Here's why:
The first time someone teaches a course, if it is to be
taught well, it can take 4-5 hours to prepare for a 1 hour lecture. So one
course (usually 3 lectures per week) amounts to about 15-18 hours of effort per
week. This does not account for things like checking homeworks, exams, etc. So
just a single course can take over 20 hours of effort per week. If one is teaching
as many as three courses per semester just as he or she enters the teaching
profession, there is no way they can do a good job of it even if they spend
more than 40 hours a week focused just on teaching (and none on research and
guiding theses and projects: which of course they ought to be doing!).
A few years of this overload will most probably lead to a
burnout: not enough motivation or creative juice left for the times when one is
senior and teaching loads reduce. I think this is one reason why research
standards are not too high in most universities and colleges in India. Instead
many of our more senior academics end up indulging themselves in too much
politics and worry too much about which administrative post they get to hold
and which not. They are not "immersed in knowledge": which is what
one would like to see.
On the other hand, after someone has taught a course a
couple of times, the preparation time required for delivering a lecture reduces
(lecture notes are ready and only need to be updated once in a while, there is
a database of homework problems, etc.): thus allowing for the possibility of
taking on another course alongside.
So if at all there has to be a variation in teaching
loads based on seniority (and I don't believe this should be the case), the
junior faculty ought to be given the least: preferably just one course a
semester, and encouraged to settle into a "research rhythm".
Meaningful research requires a significant investment of time and effort over a
long period of time. It can take as much as 10-20 years of sustained effort in
a direction to deliver something of value. So the sooner in one's career one
settles into a research rhythm the better. And once one is in a good research
rhythm and has taught a few different courses a few times, it would be possible
for them to maybe teach an additional course.
So if at all there must be a variation in teaching loads
based on seniority (again: I do not believe this should be the case), it ought
to be 1 --> 2 --> 3 as one goes through his or her promotions (and not 3
--> 2 --> 1!).
Ideally though, in my personal opinion, one ought to be
required to teach at most 1 and a 1/2 course per semester (= 3 Lectures + 1 Problem Solving Session OR 3 Lectures + 1st Hour of Lab for detailed explanations regarding experiments to be conducted [after that Teaching Assistants and Lab Technical Staff oversee experiments]) throughout one's career with an
increased emphasis on research (any additional courses someone may want to
teach of their own interest or will being entirely their prerogative).
To better understand where things have gone wrong in our
country's academia, consider this: Pretty much any book dealing
with any field of science and technology (I don't know enough about other
fields to comment on them) that you pick up today contains knowledge that has
by and large been discovered outside our country. Our input, either in terms of
modern knowledge or aspects of traditional knowledge that may still be relevant
and worthwhile, is pretty much non existent. One of the reasons this has
happened is we have misunderstood the academic's role at a very fundamental
level. We have turned things upside down. Our (mis)understanding is that
professors are meant to primarily be in classrooms i.e. they are just teachers. What this translates to is professors (at least in science
and technology) in our country being required to simply assimilate knowledge
discovered elsewhere and spend hours and hours in the classroom to pass it on
to the next generation. Then comes all this noise about how professors should
be solving problems that in fact our bachelors and masters degree holders should
be. At the end of it all, this is how
much value addition happens in terms of knowledge discovery: Zero.
If we don't correct our understanding now, we will still be
in the same boat fifty years from today. We will still be reading books that
contain knowledge discovered by other people elsewhere. Neither would we have
made a significant contribution to the global knowledge community in modern knowledge
nor would we have been able to revive those aspects of our traditional
knowledge that may still be relevant and worthwhile but can get lost in
obscurity due to not being studied systematically. And if we don't consolidate
our identity in the field of knowledge, we are going to stay behind overall. We
will always be the world's backyard. Many may come and "Make in
India" but we will never really reach the level where we "Create in
India" and capture the world's imagination. You can be absolutely assured
of this.
An academic is as much a philosopher, a thinker, a researcher, as a teacher. They have to be given the time and space to immerse themselves in knowledge and contemplate deeply on fundamental problems and challenges. Spending quality time in their offices and labs with a firm and intense research focus and delivering a few hours of lectures of the highest quality every week - this has to be our modus operandi if we are to be at the very frontiers of knowledge and take our understanding of ourselves and the universe we live in further.
