Grade the teacher

You don8217;t need to be a bright college professor to understand that if you are guaranteed a lifelong job, no questions asked, if your pr...

You don8217;t need to be a bright college professor to understand that if you are guaranteed a lifelong job, no questions asked, if your promotion depends only on how long you8217;ve warmed your chair, you will be hopping mad when someone stands up and says: Let8217;s evaluate your work every three or five years.

That perhaps explains the self-serving outrage of teachers8217; associations over the University Grants Commission8217;s bold idea that teachers should be hired on contract and their work reviewed regularly. So you have the head of the BJP-affiliated teachers8217; association calling it 8216;irrational and misguided.8217; And the Left-dominated union calling it a 8216;political move8217; and a 8216;sell-out to globalisation.8217;

If there8217;s one thing the Left and the Right usually agree on, it8217;s on protecting turf. And the UGC8217;s idea strikes at the very heart of this. For, inherent in it is the idea of competition, of peer review and accountability 8212; ideas that elsewhere have become second nature. For example, in the US, both private and state universities have uniformly adopted the tenure-track system under which entry-level teachers need to show significant contribution to their field of study and research before their tenure can be formalised. And even if that8217;s done, they can always be recalled if they slacken.

Moreover, virtually all universities have institutionalised a system of teachers8217; assessment by students, semester by semester, course by course. Call for these reforms and you will be accused of heresy.

Certainly, and this point needs to be underlined, the UGC needs to specify how it plans to implement its idea, how will it insulate the review system from political vendetta, ego clashes and nepotism, qualities that have, thanks to successive governments and teachers8217; lobbies, struck deep roots in our academia.

Will the present unattractive structure of compensation be revised? For, merit-based contract employment, in all sectors, comes with sufficient compensation for reduced security of tenure. What will the indicators of performance be? Research papers in quality journals? Books? Attendance in classes, coursework, teaching methods? UGC chairman Arun Nigvekar, in an interview to this newspaper, has suggested that such questions will be discussed in detail as the proposal is worked upon. We wish him good luck. As for protesting teachers, all we can say is: If you welcome peer review and accountability, chances are your students will take you more seriously 8212; when you hand them their grades.