Prof. K.S Chandrasekar
Indian higher education is one of the fastest growing sector in the World. The demand for higher education is constantly rising, likely to be 160 million by 2025, the state support in terms of funding per student as unit, is declining. India and China will be the two biggest countries seeking higher education. Demand is growing at the rate of 20 per cent per annum in India. India has over 56,000 institutions that cater to 40 million students, supported by 16 lakh teachers. Majority (68%) being Lecturers/Assistant Professors. Readers/Associate Professors represent around 10% of the total faculty, followed by Professors & equivalent at 9.5%, Demonstrators/Tutors at 6%, Temporary Teachers at 5.7%, and Visiting Teachers at 0.8%. The number of Professors has marginally increased over the years. India aims to add 26 million enrolments by 2035, which requires increased investments in staff, technology and infrastructure in order to reach the GER of 50%. It is pertinent to note that no Indian elite universities/ institutions is in the top 10 in Asia as per Times Higher Education World university rankings 2024. This has been highlighted by the Hon’ble PM, Education Minister time and again. If we look at the French University, PSL, in their vision for 2035 have mentioned that they would like to position it among the top 10 universities in the world by 2035, while developing an inclusive policy and asserting its role at the forefront of change. This will be achieved by four cardinal principles like Open excellence, collegial governance: 15 establishments of PSL University to be given autonomy, Institutional consolidation and budgetary sustainability, Strengthening academic excellence and international attractiveness and recruiting and retaining talent.
Oxford University has mentioned that by 2035, their focus will rely primarily on the people as the foundation and hence to attract, recruit and retain the highest calibre diverse profile of staff with appropriate work life balance is going to be the major focus. They intend to provide childcare provision and flexible working policies, and enabling academic staff to vary their duties over the course of their career. They want to support staff in personal and professional development and review and improve their current arrangements to support the personal and career development of all staff. Cambridge University in their statement mentioned that they would implement Staff Review and Development (SRD) for University employees, across all grades and areas of work in the University. Its key purpose is to enhance work effectiveness and support professional development. SRD enables conversations that support increased satisfaction, motivation, well-being, and contribute to building strong and effective working relationships. Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität (LMU) München in Germany which was founded in 1472 in their plan for 2035 mentioned implementing LMU Academic Career Program for all those who are serving and planning a career in LMU, providing Junior Researcher Fund & Knowledge Transfer Fund through the Young Center of the Center for Advanced Studies (CAS) & LMU Research Fellows. In order to ensure continuity of faculty, post doc support has been provided to all. By 2035, there will be tenure track academic and research faculty positions opened globally to attract students from all regions.
Harvard University, one of the oldest universities in the World has quoted that by 2035, focuses on workload management, increase compensation, funding opportunities, celebrating and rewarding faculty and staff productivity, achievements, and milestones, level up skills and knowledge through enhanced training and professional development programs and update, maintain processes to ensure activities are maximally streamlined. Even the Russian universities have created Individual Educational Trajectory (IET 3.0.) for the purpose of reskill and up skill training.
Waseda University of Japan has been doing assessment of needs in 2035 with their Vision 150 which is now in its fourth stage. “Transform Waseda from a Domestic Japanese University to a Global University.” Its goal is to become a global university by adopting the four courses of action including building a foundation for knowledge in a global society of multicultural coexistence and integration, promoting interdisciplinary research by leveraging Waseda’s strengths, making every corner of the world a place of learning while nurturing global community leaders and establishing an international research center for Japanese and Asian cultures. In terms of its human resources, project to define the roles of Waseda faculty and staff, clarify the evaluation criteria for faculty, and reform the related rules and regulations, project to develop human resources and project to build excellence in administrative operations to achieve its objective by 2035.
In India one of top engineering institution, IIT Delhi outlined its vision for 2030 and mentioned that they will consult with the institute’s leadership and faculty Input from donors to the Endowment Fund Research on leading global technical universities,
obtaining feedback from the institute’s students and alumni, interviews with Deans and Associate Deans, working sessions with the faculty committee led by the Deputy Director of Strategy and Planning , feedback from the entire 600+ member institute faculty and senate, conducting interviews with founding donors of the Endowment Fund, Futuristic requirement interviews with board members of the endowment fund, case studies of global and Indian academic institutions and conducting interviews with select officials and alumni of these institutes to ensure IIT Delhi is truly a world class player encompassing all the multi-disciplinary aspects that are needed to be a top institution. They have also ensured in the plan to enable departments to hire flexibly (e.g., joint positions with private sector, joint positions with global universities) to build expertise in new areas in a more agile manner. Simplifying administrative processes for faculty and invest in building a cadre of administrative support staff to free-up faculty time for core teaching, research and technology development. Students and faculty will be encouraged to dream big and to actively start thinking about the role they can play in taking IIT Delhi to new heights.
In the case of IISc, their plan for human resources include having multidisciplinary research faculty, Encouraging faculty to publish in peer-reviewed journals, Encouraging faculty to present at national and international conferences, Foster partnerships with industry and other academic institutions, Expediting faculty recruitment and conduct faculty performance analysis and regular training. India marching towards $5 trillion economy needs support from Universities and institutions that the faculty are becoming a pivotal role as such.
The impediments in India is that there is acute faculty shortage for postgraduate programs, rigid faculty recruitment process, heavy reliance on contractual positions and there is inadequate uptake of professor of practice positions by high quality industry professionals and practitioners. Tenure tracks have been discussed but is yet to be implemented. By 2035, there is a need for the participation of industry partners in curriculum and pedagogical development and revision is limited, which impedes the relevance of the content and pedagogical methods. There is a need to enable international capacity-building for faculty thereby contributing to overall academic improvement. UGC now has an online recruitment process for VCs of central universities. Similarly there is a need for Centralised online recruitment process for all faculty of central universities and then to the state universities in association with respective states. There is a need to develop workload management policies that prioritize a healthy work-life balance for faculty. There is an impending impact of artificial intelligence on the faculty in higher education but with the data available from all universities across the globe, it is clear that human resources are very much essential for the overall development of people at large and there must be restraint on the use of artificial intelligence. What is more important is the extent to which they are skilled to provide the employability skills of the students at that point of time. As mentioned in the Upanishads, education is not about giving academic degrees to students but building excellent human character. Hence it is important that we have appropriate faculty who could guide them to be a great personality in order to achieve Vikasit Bharat in 2047.
(The author is Vice Chancellor, Cluster University of Jammu)
