Why this Great Demand for Research-Oriented Faculty Members?

On Why Universities / Colleges Today, are Keen on Hiring Research-Oriented Faculty Members

The Great Demand for Candidates with a ‘Robust Research Agenda’

#newspaperinlearning #importanceofresearch

15th November 2023

Every Wednesday, The Hindu carries its weekly supplement titled, ‘Opportunities’ which contains a host of Colleges / Universities advertising their ‘Faculty requirements’ for their various programmes.

This blog post intends to look at a cross-section of advertisements for ‘Faculty Recruitments’ carried in The Hindu, in the past one month, to highlight the shifting trends in Recruitment of Faculty in Universities / Colleges across India.

A majority of the Colleges / Universities of high repute, have openly stated their intent in their advertisements that they wish to hire only faculty members who have a flair for research, with research publications in reputed journals.

Added reason why they literally invest lakhs of rupees to advertise their requirements through prestigious newspapers – to get the best talent in the field of research, for themselves.

In fact, Universities today, (especially private Universities) vie with one another to grab the best in academia unto themselves. [They don’t mind even paying them exorbitant salaries and other perks and amenities as well!]

Shiv Nadar University Website

Shiv Nadar University's Website

There are quite a few reasons for this development!

Firstly, academic institutions today are looked upon as mining centres, wherein, useful metals / materials like gold, iron, coal, gemstones, limestone, chalk, etc that contain valuable constituents within them, are extracted (mined) by markets, for the sake of profit.

And markets obviously, are keen on hiring only ‘research-oriented’ candidates, with a robust research & development agenda on them, in order to further their prospects – business and otherwise!

Secondly, Ranking Agencies and Accrediting Agencies have started prioritizing Innovation, Incubation, Research and Development for the past ten years. For example, the QS World University Rankings has designed its rankings to assess performance according to what it believes to be key aspects of a university's mission: teaching, research, nurturing employability, and internationalization.

Thirdly, research-oriented faculty are considered the ‘brain of the institution’, and they help in making rapid strides in the research and development division of the institution concerned. One reason why, they are considered ‘strategic intellectual assets’ to the institution.

Universities / Colleges that have focussed on the ‘research component’ are now reaping the benefits on the Rankings and on the Markets Factor as well!

Sample this news article published last week, in The Economic Times.

Hence, the growing need and awareness on the part of academia to lure high-quality researchers who make an impact on society, culture, quality of life, public policy, etc, through their highly original contributions to the ‘existing body of knowledge’.

PS: You may want to read our past blog post on ‘Reinventing the Higher Education System’, carried in our blog HERE, well over a decade ago, on 12th June 2013, that so beautifully foresees, forecasts and foretells this recent trend!

"The Changing Nature of University Research!"

Why Interdisciplinarity Matters Today | in Teaching & Research

[The Changing Nature of University Research]

& The Tunnel Vision Problem in Disciplinary Studies 

#newspaperinlearning #interdisciplinarystudies

Last week there was an interesting article in The New Indian Express by Shankkar Aiyar on ‘Non-Economists Who Are Successfully Fighting Inflation’.

Shankkar Aiyar observed that –

Monetary policy in four of the largest economic blocs in the world, is managed by non-economists!

RBI Governor Shaktikanta Das did his BA & MA in History at St Stephens in Delhi.

Governor, Bank of England, Andrew Bailey, studied history at Cambridge.

European Central Bank President Christine Lagarde studied law and political science at Paris Nanterre University.

US Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell studied Politics at Princeton.

Tasked with shepherding the economy through turmoil they have wrestled with words to pave the transition, says Shankkar Aiyar.

Well, these real-life examples underline to a great extent, the significance and the importance of cultivating an interdisciplinarity mindset, in academia today.

Allen Repko et al, in their book titled, Introduction to Interdisciplinary Studies, highlight the importance of Interdisciplinary Studies.

Just thought of giving valuable excerpts from their book for us.

What Is Driving Interdisciplinary Studies Today?

For over two decades, major scientific organizations, funding agencies, and prominent educators have advocated the need for interdisciplinary studies.

The current interest in interdisciplinarity is widespread and increasing in intensity, motivated by the belief that it is now basic to education and research.

To meet this perceived need, educators have developed a wide range of interdisciplinary courses and “studies” programs.

Interdisciplinarity, it is fair to say, is becoming an integral part of higher education.

Say for example - 

A key component of an economy is its central bank and its power to set interest rates.

By lowering the prime interest rate, the central bank impacts the economy in multiple ways, economic as well as noneconomic.

There are also the unexpected political impacts of a reduction in the prime rate.

So if you ask the question - 

“What interest rate should the nation’s central bank charge?” 

answering it requires input from several disciplines including political science (which studies government policies and international relations), economics (which studies consumer behavior), philosophy (which studies ethics and logic), and possibly history (which studies historical patterns).

The Absence of Contextual Thinking in Disciplinary Studies

Contextual thinking is the ability to view a subject from a broad perspective by placing it in the fabric of time, culture, or personal experience.

Sadly, contextual thinking is not a primary learning outcome of traditional disciplinary majors.

After completing their general requirements (which vary from university to university), many undergraduates specialize or “major” in a traditional discipline.

As they proceed in their major, they are prone to develop a silo perspective, meaning the tendency to see the university and the larger world through the narrow lens of that major.

In contrast, undergraduates pursuing an interdisciplinary field such as environmental studies, cultural studies, American studies, urban studies, and health management studies are taught to relate the smallest parts of the system they are studying to the whole.

A hallmark of interdisciplinary studies is relating the particular to the whole by drawing on multiple disciplinary perspectives that are relevant to a specific problem or question.

The Changing Nature of University Research

A key driver of interdisciplinary studies is the changing nature of university research.

Emphasizing more interdisciplinary research is both financially and scientifically sensible, says Columbia University Professor Mark C. Taylor, because graduates are becoming too specialized to find employment due to the unsustainable nature of department-based hierarchies.

Interdisciplinarity Acquires Academic Legitimacy in the 1980s and 1990s

In the early 1980s, interdisciplinarity began to acquire academic legitimacy.

Women’s studies programs asserted that they were interdisciplinary by their very nature, which, in this instance, linked interdisciplinarity with critiques of the academy in general and the disciplines in particular.

Environmental studies also embraced the interdisciplinary impulse by seeking to pull together insights from a variety of disciplines to form holistic conceptions such as ecosystems.

“Your planet is very beautiful,” [said the little prince]. “Has it any oceans?”

“I couldn’t tell you,” said the geographer. . . .

“But you are a geographer!”

“Exactly,” the geographer said. “But I am not an explorer. I haven’t a single explorer on my planet.

It is not the geographer who goes out to count the towns, the rivers, the mountains, the seas, the oceans, the deserts.

The geographer is much too important to go loafing about. He does not leave his desk.”

The lesson of this story is that specialization—that is, “not leaving [your] desk” to see what’s outside your area of specialization—can blind you to the broader context of a situation.

Specialization Tends to Produce Tunnel Vision

Disciplinary specialization can produce consequences much like what tunnel vision produces.

In natural eyesight, tunnel vision means that the eye has only a small area of focus, with the rest of the field of view beyond the lens being unfocused or blurry, as shown in the picture.

When it comes to approaching a complex problem, the specialist is able to focus only on the part of the problem that is familiar to the specialist, not on other parts that fall outside the specialist’s area of expertise.

Focusing on only part of a complex problem can produce serious unintended consequences.

Specialization Tends to Discount or Ignore Other Perspectives

Interdisciplinarity faults the disciplines for sometimes failing to consider other perspectives. Conversely, the rise of interdisciplinary research and learning reflects the need to ask new questions, try new approaches, produce new technologies, and develop new intellectual orientations.

We can never entirely dispense with the disciplines as a means of organizing knowledge, but we can use them to create new intellectual configurations of knowledge,

sign off Repko et al.

Image Source: [Under Creative Common Licence] Tunnel vision imitation by Скампецкий http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Tunnel_vision_sc.png licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en 

When we had 'Bombay to London' Regular Bus Services ❤️

When There Was an Acute Water Scarcity All Over Chennai!

Chennai Stares at a Major Water Crisis

Headmaster’s Surprise Rounds

Bus Services from Bombay to London

14th November 1994

#MCCSchoolDays #memoriesfromdiaries #newspaperinlearning

Just the previous week, our Headmaster had requested all of us hostelers to use water judiciously, as Chennai was reeling under an acute water crisis.

His words proved true today – as water ran dry in all the taps in our school. Luckily, a few of us early birds had the luxury of having our morning bath today, and then we had dutifully saved a bucketful of water each, for our emergency use, as well.

Rapid urbanisation and poor water management were some of the reasons attributed to this water crisis across the city and its suburbs.

This was in the year 1996.

However, within a span of five years, there was a great improvement in the groundwater levels in Chennai, thanks to the mandatory implementation of the rainwater harvesting for houses and buildings in 2001 by the former CM of Tamil Nadu Dr. Jayalalithaa.

In fact, Tamil Nadu became the first state in India to have implemented the rooftop rainwater harvesting (in each and every house and building), in the whole of India.

Five years after the scheme was successfully implemented, there was a visible and perceptible change in the situation. Groundwater levels in Chennai rose almost 50 percent and the quality of water improved as well.

This morning, [14th November 2023], yet again, I read in the Chennai Edition of The Hindu, about poor water management, leading to gallons of water being let into the sea.

Coming back –

The late risers, my friends Nokul and Gary, took a cup of water each from my savings! 😊

We had a new Math master, who fumbled while teaching us to solve problems. Hence the guys in class laughed at him. [something that we shouldn’t have done!]

We didn’t have lab since our lab attender Ramasamy was on leave, and hence the lab couldn’t be opened for our Chemistry practicals.

Morning breakfast we had booris which was not that good! Afternoon we had coconut rice, which again, most of us didn’t like at all.

Physics master Nedums asked for students from the hostel who were absent today to class, since seven out of 11 hostelers were conspicuous by their absence in class, today.

Back in the hostel - some of the mischievous guys in our dormitory used to regularly take utmost care to fuse the hostel main lights, so that, whatever mischief that was done within the hostel wasn’t visible to the warden. 😊

Suddenly, there was a rumour that our Headmaster was coming on his ‘surprise’ rounds to the hostel. So a gentle hush and a solemn lull fell on the entire dormitory, cubicle after cubicle. 

And it really took a while for the silent spell to subside! 😊

Then, we all assembled - as usual - in the cubicle of Karuppiah, our class topper (Karups as we called him), to write our Zoology practical drawing assignments, followed by our Chemistry assignments.

This was the time when we used to have a lot of interesting conversations that centred around cricket, football, chess, Tinkle, Hardy Boys, Archies, Tintin, Asterix, etc.

Girish, was an enthusiastic chess player, and an eager-beaver reader. He had this good habit of collecting interesting tidbits from the newspapers, magazines and digests, and then sharing it with all of us in our post-dinner sessions or during our early morning coffee time.

Today, during our homework time, he shared with all of us the fascinating news that there was a regular bus service from Bombay to London many decades ago. Some of the boys scoffed at him for that, while others curiously enquired about the news.

My friend Girish was indeed right. There were regular bus services from Calcutta to London, followed by services from Bombay to London as well.

The bus started its Calcutta (today Kolkata) to London operations with 20 passengers on board. The bus departed from London on April 15, 1957, and reached Kolkata (formerly called Calcutta) on 5th June.

The bus journeyed through France, Italy, Yugoslavia (as it was known then), Bulgaria, Turkey, Iran and Pakistan before finally reaching India.

Christened “magic buses”, there was a great demand for such buses, across the metros, and spurred by the demand, travel operators operated many more of such services from Bombay to London, Delhi to London, etc. 

Image and facts courtesy: TN Govt Archives / curlytalesdotcom

'The world’s deadliest mid-air collision ever' near Delhi | Due to Lack of English-language Skills!

World’s Deadliest Aviation Accident near Delhi

Reason: Lack of English language Skills Amongst the Airline Crew

#memoriesfromdiaries

13th November 1996

Wreckage of the Airliners - Post mid-air collision

Today (13th November 1996) was at home, and hence in the evening, with my bestie Tilak went to see Mr. Romeo, starring Prabhu Deva and Shilpa Shetty. The movie was released two days ago, on 10th November 1996.

On the sad front, read in today’s newspaper (13th November 1996) about the deadliest mid-air collision in aviation history that had occurred near Delhi.

The Airliners - Before the Collision and During the Collision

On Tuesday, 12th November 1996, a Boeing 747 Saudia Airliner that was headed for Saudi Arabia, (en route from Delhi), and a Kazakhstan Airliner that was coming from Kazakhstan, to Delhi, collided at a village around 100 km west of Delhi.

The collision resulted in the deaths of all 349 people on board both planes, making it the world’s deadliest mid-air collision ever, and the deadliest aviation accident to have ever occurred in India.

Shockingly enough, the commission that investigated the deadliest mid-air collision in aviation history, finally determined that the Kazakhstani airline crew were to be blamed for the disaster, owing to their lack of English language skills.

As per their reports, the pilots of the Kazak airliner lacked English language skills, and they were completely relying on their Radio Operator alone, for communicating with Air Traffic Control.

Hence the First Officer of the airliner might have completely misunderstood Air Traffic Controller Dutta’s final radio call, says the report.

On an aside -

Kazakhstan, is a landlocked country in Central Asia, and the official languages of Kazakhstan are Kazakh and Russian. English is not spoken there.

It is said that, only in the past two decades, the younger generation has woken up to the importance of the English language, and have started learning English.

Image courtesy: web.bookstruck.in/book/chapter/47956

"When a minister’s relative’s plantation is visited by an elephant..." 💚

Whose Roads These Are…?

#newspaperinlearning #animalstudies #sentientbeings

#literaryanimalstudies #habitatstudies

13th November 2023

This particular news report in The Times of India, Chennai Edition dated 11th November 2023, caught my attention for the simple reason that, I personally found the headline quite reductive! 

‘Ambattur residents say stray cows make their roads unsafe!’

Although the headline foregrounds an issue per se, the headline suffers from acute apathy, by othering the ‘sentient beings’ that co-inhabit the region along with us!

Reductive headlines such as these, engender the process of othering, wherein one group (in this case, animals) are conveniently categorised as ‘them’ or ‘theirs’ thereby subtly segregating ‘them’, insulting ‘them’, stigmatising ‘them’, excluding ‘them’, leading to increasing suspicions on ‘them’.

In short, othering focusses primarily on the differences, in order to dismantle and to destroy any connectedness between the two resulting in discrimination and denial of empathy to the group thus ‘othered’.

The mentality of pronouncing ‘their road’, signals a deep disconnect between the human and the nonhuman, and therefore could sound ridiculous and  blasphemous as well, by all means, according to bioregional thinkers.

In this regard, yet another redeeming article by historian and environmentalist Nanditha Krishna in the editorial page of the New Indian Express, Chennai Edition, dated 12th November 2023, proves an invaluable resource that calls for a more empathetic treatment of animals who coinhabit the bioregion along with humans.

The article is titled, “THE PLANET BELONGS TO ANIMALS TOO”.

Reproducing a few paragraphs from her article for our perusal –

Says Nanditha –

Animals share the earth with humans, but in a mad desire to acquire more land for agriculture, industry and cities, people want to kill off other inhabitants of our planet. 

When a minister’s relative’s plantation is visited by an elephant or used for a nap by a tiger, the politician demands the immediate destruction of the animal. Every day we read of people and politicians abusing animals.

As a result, animals who are an essential part of our world and could bring great happiness suffer immensely.

says Nanditha Krishna.

It would be apt here, to describe a bioregional sci-fi novel titled, Always Coming Home by American writer Ursula K. Le Guin, published in the year 1985, from The Bioregional Imagination, Edited by Tom Lynch, Cheryll Glotfelty et al.

Here goes the story of Always Coming Home –

This story takes place not far away (California) but rather in a far- distant future. Large nation-states and industrial economies are long gone, replaced by social decentralization that resonates with bioregional ideals –

“the very loose, light, soft network of the human cultures, which in their small- scale, great number, and endless diversity, manufactured and traded more or less actively, but never centralized their industry, did not ship goods and parts far, did not maintain roads well, and were not engaged in enterprises requiring heroic sacrifice, at least on the material plane”.

The book centres on the Kesh, a community that exhibits many of the anarchist philosophy and values seen in The Dispossessed, such as communism of production and distribution, absence of social hierarchy, and communitarianism.

Unlike the Anarresti, however, the Kesh display a deep sense of place and bioregional consciousness.

The protagonist, Stone Telling, recalls that as she left her home valley of Na,

“I began to feel the Valley behind me like a body, my own body. My feet were the sea- channels of the River, the organs and passages of my body were the places and streams and my bones the rocks and my head was the Mountain”.

Animals are considered part of one’s family, and there is a type of communion, even communication, with rivers and rocks. Reality is characterized by dynamic interrelatedness –

“It was the network, field, and lines of the energies of all the beings, stars and galaxies of stars, worlds, animals, minds, nerves, dust, the lace and foam of vibration that is being itself, all interconnected”.

Le Guin conveys an ecological holarchy in which things are both a system with subsystems as well as a subsystem of larger systems –

“. . . every part part of another part and the whole part of each part, so comprehensible to itself only as a whole, boundless and unclosed”.

The interconnection of humans and the more- than- human world is repeatedly emphasized –

“Thinking human people and other animals, the plants, the rocks and stars, all the beings that think or are thought, that are seen or see, that hold or are held, all of us are beings of the Nine Houses of Being, dancing the same dance.”

How beautiful the ideal, ain’t it?

How far more ecstatic it would be, if the ideal were to become the real?

Habitat Studies has a solution for this human vs nonhuman divide, by emphasising on the importance of each student –

‘becoming a scribe for a local species of plant or animal, researching its presence in literature, reading scientific studies of it, encountering it in the field, discovering its contemporary and historical uses, learning its names in different languages, and writing about it. In time, students “become” their species and learn to perceive the world from the standpoint of that plant or animal’. [from The Bioregional Imagination]

So yes! What we need is simply this - 

Let us together strive to incorporate a bioregional pedagogy as part of our educational strategies, for promoting a more empathetic attitude to the millions of species on this planet, that co-inhabit and dwell, along with us. 

The need of the hour is to celebrate empathetic treatment, compassionate conservation, respectful coexistence and entangled empathy with the non-human!

I would like to sign off with the endearing words of the legendary Dutch primatologist and ethologist Frans de Waal –

‘‘If part of the other resides within us, if we feel one with the other, then improving their life automatically resonates with us”. 💚

"Sometimes, all you needed on a pleasant Sunday morning, was your cup of coffee and your New Indian Express!"

Personal Notes on The New Indian Express | Then & Now

12th November 2000 | Sunday

#newspaperinlearning 

#memoriesfromdiaries

The Indian Express has always been a cut above the rest, when it comes to its unique style of presentation.

While The Hindu has always sported a kinda bland, monotonous style as regards its font type, [akin to its Frontline], that made the reader feel sleepy at times,  😊 the New Indian Express gave us a highly engaging font style that was so appealing to the eyes, and quite endearing to the lay reader!

However, midway through its journey, somewhere along the line, the New Indian Express guys seem to have faulted – blame it on ill-advice from their top honchos, - or whatever, - they seemed to be spiraling on a downward course during the period from 2003 to 2010. 

Back then, [up until 14th April 2008], The Times of India, was literally unheard of in Tamil Nadu. and so was Deccan Chronicle.

Hence, the competition was only between The Hindu and The New Indian Express.

Even as regards pricing, The Indian Express was priced a tad bit higher than its counterpart The Hindu!

In 1999 itself, the price of the Sunday Edition was Rs. Five!

Today, 12th Nov 2023, it’s priced at Rs.12/- [While The Times of India is priced at Rs.6/- on Sundays] and The Hindu is priced at Rs.10/-

However, the Sunday Edition of the New Indian Express was a real literary delight you see!

Sometimes, all you needed on a pleasant Sunday morning, was your cup of coffee and your New Indian Express! Nothing more! Nothing less!

Today's Coffee Click

That was the aura of the New Indian Express!

Today, they’ve got an improved presence and they have carved a niche for themselves in the print media yet again, after a decade of a low and a lull!

PS: You might be able to understand the quantum and the intensity of the lull that the New Indian Express had suffered from, back then, if you could just read this past post HERE on our blog, on 17th April 2008 – the week the Times of India set foot in namma Chennai!