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.