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Educating the Educator: University of Madras

Mani Krishna

Education plays a vital role in not only shaping an individual. But also an economy. An educational institution is suppose to educate. But, here we find an institution, which needs to be educated. One of the oldest educational institutions (over 100 years old) of India is University of Madras in Tamil Nadu. However, this institution is under a multi-dimensional mess : educational, political, and human resources to name a few.

Any good educational institution and research centre will update its syllabus on a regular basis. We find this not happening at the campus of University of Madras. Its syllabus is outdated. In fact, it is lagging by at least 50 years. For example, there have been many developments taken place in the field of Economics all over the world. But, the syllabus of Madras University has not undergone changes to cope up with the trends happening in the field of Economics. Can any one believe that its syllabus does not include the theory of Markowitz, the advocate of portfolio choice, which is a Noble Prize winner? Due to this non-updating of syllabus, the candidates produced by this university are not able to match industry standards once they are seeking employment.

When contacted by the author of this article, one genuine faculty member opened up with facts, which are highly disturbing. To quote him, we, few members do agree with you that the academic syllabus has to match the latest developments taking place in practice. However, when we recommend for such a change in syllabus, the academic council - which is comprised of various faculty members of colleges under the control of University of Madras - do happily reject such changes without assigning any logical reasons. This is mainly due to the fact that if the syllabus is updated, they have to get equipped before they take classes for which the teaching community is not interested. What an attitude educators of our prestigious (!) institution posses? Another reason for the faculty to reject the syllabus updating is that some have got parallel business activities, such as running a business centre. Thus, they do not have time to teach. For all these illiterate and unethical attitude of them, they are endowed with high pay packets, which is not ethically justified.

The University do not have a Human Resources Division which can plan for its man power. In many departments we find excess staff, especially teaching staff. To continue with our example, the Department of Economics has nine teaching staff, just to handle one batch of a post graduation of students, one batch of M.Phil students and few Ph.D. students. Thus, one faculty will have to put up with only two to three hours of classes per week. However, the quantity of staff can be justified if their quality is high. That is, if they produce quality research work or quality research candidates. There can candidates in the Department of Economics for over a decade who have still not completed their research degrees, thanks to the inefficient guidance and exploitation of the faculty.

It is further worsened by the fact that, many of the teaching faculty in the department is not even able to speak proper English. They posses a high degree of non-communicative skills. First they should be taught how to communicate, before they are allowed to teach. We do not find any such communication training programs for the faculty organised by the University management. One of the major reasons for the poor quality of the faculty is due to the politically motivated selection process and inadequate man power planning by the University.

When the Tamil Nadu Chief Minister is positioning his state as an IT savvy state, we find out dated communication methodologies used by the University of Madras. For instance, a Ph.D. candidate is suppose to submit his thesis is a printed format, which is sent to the evaluators by post or by sea-mail (in the event of overseas examinor). This leads to several unpleasant experiences to the candidate, such as, undue delay in obtaining the degree (in certain cases they get their degree after three years of submission), and delay in seeking an employment. There are Universities in India which accept thesis in a computer disc and the same is sent by e-mail to examiners and the comments obtained fast.

One-way to come out of this nonsense is that the pay packets of the teaching faculty have to be tied up with their contribution. This has to be evaluated by an independent body. Faculty selection process has to be de-linked from political interference. Improve the communication skills of the educators and the University.

Once the educational system of this country is opened up along with other sectors in due course with the swift liberalisation process, these kind of once-prestigious educational institutions have to fight with the private sector which will make them literally run for their money and life. They will vanish in the long run, become history and remain only as a monument in front of the world famous Marina beach.