Whispers Forum

Do the university professors teach for less than 40 hours in a year on an average? Can they be expected to teach for 200 hours in a year @ 4 hours a week? To get a degree a student has to read 1000s of pages of material of scholarly literature. To understand and absorb all that knowledge s/he must read @50 pages or more a day. The ideas are difficult to appreciate and language terse which requires help of teachers. About 10 to 12 hours are needed for commuting to university, daily chores, eating and sleep. Work out the hours left to pursue learning in a year and the sum is likely to leave hardly any time to complete the syllabus. Can the graduate students or PG students afford the luxury of wasteful non-academic activities like silly protests and violence on the campus? Every moment is precious for a learner at the UG/PG level. It is not mere subject study to obtain a degree but education, acquisition of skills and inter-personal relationships also for an all-round development of personality. Are the professors helping these students acquire all these? Unfortunately, if the teachers lack skills they can’t transfer them to their students. For teachers to be useful, hard work alone can transform them in to great mentors. Apparently teachers are not sensitive to these needs of their students and waste the time of students by indulging in politics around ideologies and doctrines which should not take more than an hour of a lecture by the subject expert teacher. Teachers must do their duty sincerely and justice to students and their own conscience! It is no matter of pride for a university Professor not to take a single class in two years (speaking as a student)! Students must be employable and job ready before they pass out. But that is possible only if teachers are likely oriented. Time for interchange of academic practices in universities and IITs and IIMs etc. How can half of India have the privilege of excellent teachers and the remaining half the curse of poor teachers?
M L Gupta