Higher education in India has
experienced mushroom growth in past two decades. It has entered the
consolidation phase already. Although most of the expansion has come from
privately run institutes but considerable growth has taken place in public
sector also. Few corporate have also entered education domain but largely for
the CSR reasons than motivated by the mission to create a world class
institutions. You could judge the priority & importance the governments in
India lay on the education sector by the very fact that the MHRD don’t have put
up 2017 data on its website as on May 24, 2017. The website mentions “As of
2014, there are 677 universities, 37,204 colleges
and 11443 stand-alone institutions in India”.
It’s universally accepted that the quality of faculty is the most critical factor for imparting top grade education. Curriculum, Infrastructure, network and technology comes after the basic need good quality faculty. Those who have the opportunity to study from high quality faculty possess expert level skills to contribute to the profession they undertake. Anyone can be a great faculty if she/he could acquire the expertise in the following 5 factors and demonstrate it frequently.
Subject Grasp: Everyone thinks her/his grasp over the subject/s is absolutely fine till s/he put it to test. Therefore it’s recommended that the faculty must test own domain knowledge at least once every three years by solving the examination paper given to the students. The institute and the government could also make it mandatory for teachers to take a test periodically.
Domain Knowledge: Education is multidisciplinary and each subject shares concepts, tools and principles with wide variety of other subjects. Therefore it’s imperative that the faculty must be encouraged to develop expertise in a gamut of subjects required for effective teaching. Many subjects particularly from science and professional arena can’t be understood properly if a faculty lacks the field experience. A doctor without practice in a hospital would make a lousy faculty of medicine. Similarly engineering and management also put same demands on the faculty.
Communication skill: Most often it’s recommended that a faculty must have excellent communications skills. Well it’s desired that the faculty must be able to speak fluently the language understandable by the students but more critical communication skill for a faculty are reading and writing than the speech. World class faculty should be able to read and understand complex papers, journals and also write in concise clear manner.
Empathy: Good faculty must empathies with students and be able to behave like the students in the classroom. Knowledge can be transferred easily if the learner trusts the teacher. Moreover a faculty good or bad leave an impression on the audience and also influence the personality of students. Faculty could strive to understand the psyche and group behavior of the class one intends to handle. The faculty needs to win confidence of students for positive learning outcomes.
Grasp of Edutech: No faculty can claim to plough the lone furrow in internet dominated world of education. Therefore a great teacher must work hard continuously to catch up with the technical expertise of the students. I would recommend that every faculty must be a step ahead of the students on handling edutech so as to inspire the students.
