The article is excellent but not applicable in Toto to the Indian conditions.
For instance, teaching and research as well as industry-institute are considered
separate in India. We follow the Macaulay model and not western model for
education.
Let me put education philosophy as:
Part-I: Initiating and facilitating pursuit of excellence
Acquisition of basic skills.
Reflective practice and search for style.
A personal philosophy of teaching derived from competence, self-esteem and
values.
Avoid “7 Deadly Sinsâ€
1. Arrogance.
2. Boredom.
3. Laziness.
4. Rigidity.
5. Insensitivity.
6. Hypocrisy.
7. Stagnation.
Part-B:
Academic Philosophy
i. To challenge all students to meet their academic goals and to work hard
to maximize their academic potential.
ii. Students, faculty and staff of the College will play an active role in
the educational process, so that students will imbibe spirit of inquiry,
discovery, critical analysis, problem handling, decision making, love of life-
long learning, creativity, responsibility, collaboration, leadership,
independent thinking, generic skills, thereby, enhancing opportunities for
individuals, organizations and society as a whole.
_________________________________________________________________
On Sun, 30 Mar 2014 20:46:27 +0530 wrote
> Philosophy of educationPROF DR BM HEGDEThe matters in our
burgeoningprivateuniversities would even makethe angelsweep. God save education
and the country!
“Education is the ability to listen to almost anything withoutlosing your
temperoryour self-confidence.â€
-Robert Frost
There is a craze for Western type of Englishmediumeducation. Firstly, those
students become cocooned in a shell far removed from the millions of their peers
who cannot afford such education! They develop a holier than thou attitude
towards the other sections of society. They truly believe that those who did not
go to such elite schools are lesser mortals who are incapable of joining their
elite club. Such individuals demean others who have not been to such
institutions little realising that some of the great thinkers of this country
had no idea about those institutions.
In fact, those who came upthe hard wayin life are best suited to rule this
country as they have experienced poverty personally to know where it pinches and
how to alleviate poverty.
A study in the US showed how the Ivy League institutes are churning out mediocre
students at the tax payers’ cost. In an article entitled “Close Harvard to
save
America", an economics professor in Ohio has shown how these elite institutions
are being favoured by the tax authorities. Giving an example the professor shows
how five of those institutions in the last one year collected $one billion in
endowment funds on which they do not pay income tax. Neither do they pay income
tax on their huge endowment fund fixed deposit interests while the ordinary
citizen pays nearly 25% of his income in taxes from which the government has to
fund hundreds of state colleges which educate almost 75% of the country's
students. The latter also give scholarships to the poorest of the poor to the
tune of 75 %.
The following paragraph from the same economics professor at Ohio University
tells it all: “A student graduating from Yale or Princeton, with their roughly
$2 million endowments per student, has aticketto a well-paying job, while one
graduating from the College of St. Joseph in Vermont, with its $29,000 endowment
per student, does not. Only 12 percent of the Yale and Princeton students have
Pells, compared with 71 percent at St. Joseph. (Pells refer to US Federal
govt.)Pell Grantis a post-secondary educational Federal grant sponsored by the
U.S Department of Education-enacted to help undergraduates of low-income
families in receiving financial aid." The difference between elite and non-
elite/commoner colleges in the USA seems to be stark.â€
Perhaps if somebody does (or has done) a similar comparison in India the
difference between elite and non-elite college education would be similar. The
people who give large endowments do not do it for nothing. They have an eye on
seats for their progeny and friends in the long run. This breeds mediocrity.
That is what is happening these days.
The other big blow for good teaching is the undue importance given to research
in western universities. There are these ace professors who live on grant
collection, paper production on a mass scale and lecturing and conference
attending. They rarely have time to spend with students to teach. Teaching has
taken a back seat. Even to get tenure positions in Ivy League institutes it is
the research CV that matters. No university gives importance to cultivate a good
teacher who has a flare for teaching and making students feel comfortable. The
other side of the coin is that standards of research have come down so much that
a recent study showed that more than 95% of research done in these universities
does not take knowledge forward and in many cases is not even worth the paper on
which it is written. Professors have little time left to guide their doctoral
students properly and PhD thesis standards are falling.
There are exceptions to what this Ohio professor was saying. Exceptions only
prove the rule. One alumnus from Berkeley has this to say. “There are good
teachers like Walter Levin at MIT, Richard Karp at Berkeley, etc., who are not
only top researchers but also top undergraduate teachers. They teach beginners,
unlike in India where senior teachers teach only senior students. Their lectures
are highly inspirational and change many a student's career. And these teachers
are not exceptions; people who are predominantly driven by research go to
industry research, which is a lot more comfortable life than tenure-track
positions. Only those that are passionate about teaching join academia and are
willing to go through the pains of getting tenure. At Berkeley for example, I
sat in undergrad 101 classes (although I was a PhD student) of some great
teachers, simply to get inspired, or to look at the subject matter from a
different angle.The top universitiesin US have "best teacher" awards, to
encourage and motivate teaching, and such awards are a real honour, "much more
than a Nobel prize", as they say in Berkeley.
Adam Smith had noted similar trends in Oxford of his days! With tenure posts of
professors and the latter receiving their salaries from the tax payers’ money,
teaching standards had fallen there even at that time. Adam Smith had shown how
job security removed the need to work hard to please the students’ curiosity.
In
the past the professors had to get their salary from students when the latter
were satisfied. If you compare this with the present western fad for big
salaries in tenure posts and job security there is no incentive for good
teaching at all. To keep up the facade that these great institutions get only
excellent students they practice grade enhancement methods. So no student who
gets into Harvard gets anything other than “A†grade! Even the grades have
become very liberal. In the 1950, the average GPA was 2.5. Today it is in the
range of 3.5-3.9 out of 4! It is not that western students have become super
intelligent in forty odd years. It is a proof that grade meddling is accepted in
those institutions.
Now we come down to our institutions. If that were the scenario in the West one
can onlyshudder to thinkof the goings on in our institutions including the
largeprivateinstitutions where all these and more should be going on. The same
applies to Indian elite institutions. The matters in our
burgeoningprivateuniversities would even makethe angelsweep. God save education
and the country!
(Professor Dr BM Hegde, a Padma Bhushan awardee in 2010, is an MD, PhD, FRCP
(London, Edinburgh, Glasgow & Dublin), FACC and FAMS. He is also Editor-in-Chief
of the Journal of the Science of Healing Outcomes, chairman of the State Health
Society's Expert Committee, Govt of Bihar, Patna. He is former Vice Chancellor
of Manipal University at Mangalore and former professor for Cardiology of the
Middlesex Hospital Medical School, University of London.)Educate, Empower,
ElevateProf. Bholanath DuttaFounder, Convener & President
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Regards,
Dr P H Waghodekar
Advisor (HR), IBS & PME (PG)
Marathwada Institute of Technology,
Aurangabad: 431028 (Maharashtra) INDIA.
(O) 02402375113 (M) 7276661925
E-Mail: waghodekar@rediffmail.com
Website: www.mit.asia
Engineering & Management Education: An Engine of Prosperity.
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