HRD Minister Javadekar says research not necessary for promotion for college teachers; university dept. faculty however need to do research

Last updated on 27th Feb. 2020

Here is a report that appeared in The Hindu, a mainstream South Indian newspaper, today, College teachers may skip research, http://www.thehindu.com/education/colleges/college-teachers-may-skip-research/article19386791.ece, dated 29th July 2017.

Given below are the quotes of Union Human Resources Development minister (who is also in charge of higher education) Shri Prakash Javadekar, from the article:

"Making research compulsory for college teachers [has] harmed research. Thirteen thousand UGC magazines came up. Many colleges made their annual magazines into quarterlies and added them. I said there are so many journals here: do you have Champak too?" [Ravi: From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Champak, "Champak (Hindi: चंपक) is a popular fortnightly magazine for children published by the Delhi Press Group since 1969 in India". end-Ravi]

"College and universities teachers are two different kinds of categories with different expectations. College teachers’ primary responsibility should be to teach well. That accountability is required" .. "We will not make research compulsory for them. We will say, ‘It is your choice’".

Ravi: I am so very happy to read these statements of HRD minister Javadekar. It has made my day!!!

Some years ago Indian UGC/AICTE governed academia, including Computer Science and Information Technology (CS & IT) academia, became diseased by the research publication craze as it had become mandatory for all academics for promotion. The impression I got was that faculty including junior faculty tried to publish research papers of any kind in all sorts of research publications. Typically, for significant number of faculty, the objective was not really to add to knowledge in a field but to get credit for publication of papers which would make them eligible for promotion! I further felt that the emphasis on teaching fell with negative impact in general on learning outcome of students graduating from Indian academia.

However, I did not find solid data to support my above views. So it was an unsubstantiated opinion.

But that has changed now. The union HRD minister who is the top man of higher education funding and regulation in India himself states that 13,000 UGC (research) magazines (publications) came up after research was made compulsory for college teacher promotion! Mind you, the number is the research magazines and not research paper publications which would be a big multiple of this number of research magazines.

The minister hints about poor quality of these research magazines by sarcastically asking whether a children's story magazine, Champak, was also added to the UGC research magazines list!

I am sure that the quality of most of the research articles in these 13,000 new UGC research magazines, in general, would have been typically from poor to junk. If so then not only were many Indian academic teachers neglecting teaching but they were doing poor quality research and not genuine research, as they just wanted to publish some articles and get credit for promotion.

HRD minister adds that primary responsibility of college teachers is to teach well and that they should be held accountable for that. They surely can do research (but NOT at the cost of the primary responsibility of teaching well).

Fantastic!!! What a great message HRD minister has sent to college teachers in Indian academia. I think this will have a good impact on Indian CS & IT college teachers as well. I am so happy about this.

HRD minister treats university departments differently. The article states that university department faculty will continue to need research publication output to get promotions. Well, if universities ensure that its faculty do get enough time and support for good and genuine research, I support this research req. for promotion in universities. However, I know that in some private and deemed universities in India, junior faculty (teachers as against research scholars) are heavily loaded with teaching and other work of the department. These junior faculty are simply not provided much time for research. How then do these junior faculty manage? Either they have to neglect their teaching duties and focus on research or focus on doing a good job of teaching and do some research on the side whenever time permits.

I have personally seen how increased emphasis on research publication output and bagging high value research project grants, made teaching a less important activity in an Indian Computer Science deemed university department, especially among many young faculty. I was shocked to see teaching getting relegated to less important status and research publication output and bagging high value research projects becoming the most important activities of the department. The poor students did not really understand such changes as they blindly went through the system as decided by senior academics of the dept. Further, some M.Tech. (CS) students were brainwashed to make joint research publication with faculty a major first objective of their project work, when there are ABSOLUTELY NO SUCH MANDATORY REQUIREMENTS from AICTE norms for an M.Tech. (CS) project. I mean, some M.Tech. (CS) students became FREE research assistants for such research project work. I consider such tactics as grossly unethical and exploitative of students.

If students are fully informed of the real needs of an M.Tech. (CS) project as per AICTE norms, and without any coercion whatsoever, allowed to choose whether they want a research publication focused M.Tech. project or something else, then I think it is fine if somebody does an M.Tech. (CS) research oriented project.

The horrific contempt some Indian Computer Science academic professors have for Indian IT industry software development professionals

It is not uncommon to find Indian Computer Science (CS) Professors (academics who hold the designation of Professor as against junior designations like Associate Professor and Assistant Professor) today whose basic qualifications are in Electrical Engineering field or Mathematics field and NOT Computer Science but were allowed to migrate to Computer Science academic field. Many of these Indian CS professors do not know how to write even a simple computer program, but are the official guides and examiners of not only M.Tech. (Computer Science) project work but also are examiners for Computer Science and Information Technology Ph.D. research scholars! I mean, some utterly ignorant in software development Indian Computer Science professors, play a vital role in deciding whether a Ph.D. candidate in Computer Science or Information Technology fields can be awarded the Ph.D. degree or not!

And why is this Ph.D. degree so important in Indian Computer Science and Information Technology (CS & IT) field? Well, the Ph.D. degree satisfies the vital UGC/AICTE (top academic regulatory bodies of India for most of Indian academia including most of Indian CS & IT academia) criteria for appointment as an Assistant Professor (or higher designation) in Indian CS & IT academic departments WITHOUT passing the National Eligibility Test, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Eligibility_Test, that tests a candidate's knowledge in a particular field (like CS & IT). In other words, acquiring a Ph.D. is a shortcut to becoming Asst. Professor in Indian academia!

Now one such Indian Computer Science professor who is ignorant about software development, showed his utter contempt for software development professionals of Indian IT industry by referring to a theoretical example of an Indian CS & IT industry professional having multiple decades of high quality international experience in the field as being interviewed for an Assistant Professor post! Some of these Indian Computer Science academic jokers are so arrogant that they think that just because they have somehow become an Indian Computer Science professor even though their basic academic qualifications are from a different field like Electrical engineering or Mathematics, they are superior in knowledge about the Computer Science field to all Indian IT software development professionals no matter how many years of high quality international experience they have! I mean, they view financially successful Indian software development professionals with contempt, and I suspect with enormous amount of envy. They seem to not be able to digest the fact that financially successful Indian software development professionals, many of whom stopped their academic studies at graduation (engg., science or commerce typically) are far more financially well off than them!

I think these Indian Computer Science academic professors would even consider interviewing Bill Gates or Mark Zuckerberg for post of Teaching Assistant in Indian Computer Science academia as they will say that Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg are "not even graduates" (that's how they speak) and so by Indian UGC/AICTE criteria they can be considered only for Teaching Assistant posts!!! In reality, UGC/AICTE does have some exception for people from industry who have made notable contributions to the field, to be appointed as Professor. Surely, UGC/AICTE will view Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg as notable figures of Computer Science field and will view them as suitable to be appointed as Professors. Further, even if the IT industry professionals concerned are not noted figures of the industry, the right designation of UGC/AICTE for them is as Visiting Faculty (paid or honorary; UGC does not comment on the payment part for Visiting Faculty).

Perhaps the right response to such Indian Computer Science academic Professors is to tell them a theoretical example of them being interviewed by experienced Indian IT software development professionals for a post of junior software developer in an Indian software development company. Of course, such Indian Computer Science academic Professors will miserably fail in that interview.
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An Indian correspondent wrote, and was OK with sharing of his comments:

Why horrific? Laughable, I would call it. Sadly true also of some of the IIT faculty who mistake the undoubted abilities of their carefully selected students with their own and feel superior!
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I (Ravi) responded (slightly edited):
--Name-snipped--, Thanks for your response.

I would be so happy if it were only laughable. That's how I viewed such things when I first got exposed to UGC/AICTE Indian CS & IT academia of middling type competence, as against top-notch National institutes of technology or IITs. Over time (I was in it for nine years), I saw that major dept. decisions including decisions that directly impact the career of junior academics in the dept. as well as the learning outcomes of students studying in the dept., would get taken by such professors! I have seen some atrocious decisions being taken with very limited scope for transparency and accountability.

A complex web of UGC/AICTE rules and individual institution rules which are typically applied selectively give enormous leeway to senior professors and dept. heads to favour what they like and suppress what they dislike.

The great amount of power given to senior professors & HODs combined with lack of transparency and lack of accountability in their decisions, in UGC/AICTE middling type Indian academic institutions make such attitudes of some Indian Computer Science professors horrific and not laughable. They can mess up a department's teaching capability in areas like teaching software development to students, for years which will negatively impact many batches of passing out CS & IT graduates and post-graduates from their department!

And it is a tight club as these professors visit other CS & IT departments for conducting examinations and other academic stuff as visiting professors. So any junior academic who dares to question these professors and blows the whistle on them publicly, will have the fear of getting targeted by other professor friends of these professors, when that junior academic's work has to be examined or project grant has to be approved by them! It is not a pleasant place to be, --Name-snipped--. Really! I wish I am proved wrong by Indian academics. But I am afraid what I am saying is the truth of middling type UGC/AICTE Indian CS & IT academic departments.

I don't even want to consider commenting on poor quality UGC/AICTE Indian CS & IT academic departments. All I will say is that the proof of the pudding is in the eating! So when I come across youngsters in Puttaparthi, I repeat in Puttaparthi, who are spending some time with a relative while waiting for a job opportunity, and when they tell me that they are B.Tech. CSE (Computer Science & Engg.) or M.C.A. (Master of Computer Applications) from some South India college and that their software development/programming courses teachers were not knowledgeable (they read from the book and teach is what the student says indicating that the teachers lacked proper software development/programming knowledge), I sigh in despair for the future of such youngsters and the future of software development in India! I advise the youngster to do some private training course in places like Hyderabad which are usually for a stiff fee but which are focused on providing job oriented software development skills, as that is the way some other B.Tech. guys that I knew got software development jobs in the recent past.

BTW I am not saying all this in the air. I met one such fresh B.Tech. CSE graduate youngster from some A.P. engg. college, who is jobless as of now, two or three days ago in Puttaparthi.

About the case of some IIT faculty you mentioned: I am not surprised at all. The system is such that the students are under the complete power of the faculty and so the faculty, being human, perhaps easily fall into an imaginary bubble where they consider themselves to be the greatly talented faculty and don't give adequate credit to the students' talents and work. If any students directly challenge the faculty for any remarks of such sort that they hear and demand appropriate credit for their contribution, the faculty will ***fix*** them. There is ZERO ACCOUNTABILITY in Indian academic system on such matters. What the club of professors say will be the final word. And, for sure, the professors in Indian academia will cover up for each other in public. Privately they may be critical of other professors but that is not of much use from a justice point of view. Administrators will want public critical comments before they take action.

The exception cases are when there are suicides and stuff like that. Then the police gets involved and all the top administrators including vice-chancellors and directors wake up. But such suicides are quite rare I think in Indian academia, thankfully.
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The Indian correspondent responded (slightly edited):

I remember you talking about the academic hierarchy and how it stifles the younger people. Perhaps now reality is beginning to enter the scene as CS moves away from being the top choice for students.
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