India can be the home of thought leaders across disciplines.
We have some impressive role models – Professor J. Ramachandran from IIM
Bangalore whom I wrote about two weeks ago, and people like Anil Gupta,
Ramachandra Guha, Raghunath Mashelkar, A. Paulraj and Manindra Agarwal whom I
wrote about last week.
In my last post, I outlined a possible agenda for the
individual scholar who aspires to have impact. The five elements of this agenda
are: (1) View yourself as more than a teacher; (2) Have a clear focus and
strategic intent; (3) benchmark against the best; (4) strive for continuous
improvement; and (5) manage your time judiciously.
But is following this agenda with individual determination
and perseverance enough? Most of us work in academic institutions. These
institutions have their own missions, and set their own priorities and rules of
the game. Unfortunately, many institutions in India don’t provide the environment
needed to support thought leadership. Excessive teaching loads, absence of
funding for research, restrictive leave and travel rules, the absence of a
climate to discuss ideas, and control-oriented leadership are some of the
inadequacies of the Indian system.
But, let’s assume that there are some institutions today
that aspire to do better, that want to provide an environment conducive for
scholarship. What should be their agenda, and how should they be managed?
Building Supportive Institutions
There are some core foundational elements which any
organization needs to provide for its members to do well. These include
treating individuals with dignity, transparency (or, at the minimum,
consistency) in organizational processes and decision-making, and basic hygiene
factors like good physical working conditions and regular and fair compensation.
From what I hear from friends who work in institutions across the length and
breadth of India, these basics are themselves scarce.
But the good news is that we have a new generation of
academic leaders in both the public and private sectors who have realized the
potential of our country and want to change things. Here is what I think they
should focus on, once they have the basics listed above in place.
Design for a Balanced Workload
People need time and space to come up with original ideas.
Research is not something that can be fitted into the gaps between classes. It
needs fairly uncluttered time. So, clearly, careful design of faculty workload
is critical to create the right environment for thought leadership.
What’s the ideal workload? Most good US universities require
faculty to teach 4 courses a year. Somewhere in the region of 120-150 hours of
teaching would seem to be ideal. Equally important is the distribution of that
teaching load. Many productive faculty find it helpful to do all their teaching
over two semesters or terms so that they have the remaining time to focus on
their research and writing.
Institutions need to hire enough faculty to allow for a
workload that balances teaching and research.
Faculty who are early in their career face enough challenges
in trying to establish themselves as scholars. Institutions certainly need to
avoid burdening them with administrative responsibilities at this stage.
Push and Pull for Excellence
Indian institutions have traditionally been weak on motivating
high levels of performance. Thanks to accreditation requirements and
stakeholder pressure, this is beginning to change. Setting high expectations
that require faculty to stretch should help to move towards excellence.
However, some cautions are in order. During a recent
discussion with some other IIM directors, it quickly became clear that
overly-elaborate points systems that measure (and often monetize) everything
may be counter-productive.
Another caution is to stretch gradually and not to the
extent that people feel tempted or compelled to resort to inappropriate means
to achieve expectations. India already has the dubious distinction of being one
of the major centres of academic fraud, and we don’t want to make this
reputation worse than it already is!
Personally, I would favour an individual goal-setting
process where each faculty has an individual plan for what s/he seeks to achieve.
Each year’s plan should be an improvement on the previous year’s plan. The plan
should necessarily have a high content of research and writing, though the
exact mix could vary from one individual to another.
While institutional expectations and the goal-setting
process provide the pull for excellence, given where we are today a strong push
is required as well. That’s where faculty development has a significant role to
play.
Make Faculty Development a Strategic Priority
Many of our leading institutions have what is called a
“Faculty Development & Evaluation Committee” (FDEC). Intriguingly, these
committees often focus only on evaluation and the “D” is deafeningly silent.
Indian higher education is on an expansion trajectory. Given
the limited mobility from industry, most of the faculty positions will be
filled by young men and women straight from doctoral programmes. While a small
percentage of these PhDs will come from foreign universities, the bulk will
come from Indian institutions.
These young PhDs from India are bright and capable. But if
they are to become high-performing scholars, they will need to be mentored and
supported. In addition to careful goal-setting, they will benefit from frequent
and constructive developmental reviews and feedback. And, institutions need to
create a portfolio of initiatives to support their development.
We are trying to put together such a portfolio at IIM
Indore. Its early days, but we have some of the ingredients in place. See the
chart below….
But, faculty development is not only about money and
incentives. It’s about mentorship and intellectual support. Helping young
faculty find the right mentors is one of my major challenges today.
It often surprises me how little time heads of institutions
spend on speaking to their faculty one-on-one in a developmental frame.
Considering that most people who come to leading academic institutions as
faculty do so because of some internal trigger or motivation, I would have
thought that all the leadership needs to do is find out how it can help each
individual attain her potential. But, in my 18 years as a faculty member, I can’t
recall any occasion when a director asked me that question or had a meaningful
discussion with me about my career and aspirations.
Invest in a Strong Doctoral Programme
This is one of the best investments you can make if you want
to build scholarship in your school. Not only do doctoral students keep abreast
of the latest developments in the field and current methodologies, they provide
an ongoing source of ideas and discussion triggers. They also provide excellent
collaborators for faculty. But, it’s amazing how many institutions in India see
doctoral programmes as a burden rather than a strong catalyst for scholarship.
Institutional Platforms for Thought Leadership
Forming Special interest groups (SIGs) around
inter-disciplinary themes can be a useful way of getting people to work
together in potentially impactful areas. This is an initiative we have just
started at IIM Indore, and we’ll hopefully have more to report in times ahead.
How do you choose the themes? Look for areas which are
relevant to the mission of your institution, that are relatively under-studied,
and that are of importance to some important stakeholder(s). Beyond that,
having a critical mass of interested individuals would help drive the SIGs
forward.
Other important platforms are powerful databases and
specially-designed or collected datasets.
Conclusion
India has a good set of competent young faculty in its
leading institutions. I hope the leaders of at least some of these institutions
will create the conditions needed to help these faculty flower and bloom as
thought leaders.
[The views expressed here are the personal views of the
author.]
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