Pick your campus based on the Qualification and competencies of the faculty
The biggest challenge faced at the Higher education level is acute shortage of qualified and competent faculty. The paucity of qualified faculty is felt even more in professional and technical institutions. With the engineering students in India increasing every day, institutions are facing a faculty shortage to the extent of 67 per cent all over the country.
A good teacher should be able to instil the following competencies among the younger generation irrespective of handling the regular curriculum.
• Curiosity – The ability to ask questions and explore how the world works
• Creativity – The ability to generate new ideas and to apply them in practice
• Criticism – The ability to Analyse information and ideas and to form reasoned arguments and Judgements
• Communication – The ability to express thoughts and feelings clearly and confidently in a range of media and forms
• Collaboration – The ability to work constructively with others
• Compassion – The ability to empathise with others and to act accordingly
• Composure – The ability to connect with the inner life of feeling and develop a sense of personal harmony and balance
• Citizenship – The ability to engage constructively with society and to participate in the processes that sustain it
A good faculty should, adapt to an unconventional teaching methodology which is highly psychological in nature. The fact that every student may bring in a unique quality and everyone thinks uniquely makes the job of the teachers highly complex. They should rather be willing to customise education for the students.
So if you are student, what should you look at before making that big decision of joining a college?
1. Student – Teacher ratio
2. Qualifications of their key faculty – Like how many of them hold a PhD. If you find scholars among the faculty; do make it point to read their publication. In case as a student if you find it difficult to understand; please seek guidance from your parents or any other elders among your friends and relatives
3. What teaching methodology does the institution follow?
4. Does the institution have required infrastructure like Labs, Any research initiative, if there are research initiatives are they funded by the Industry?
5. How many visiting faculty from the industry do spend time in the campus teaching?
6. What sort of internship supports does the college provide?
7. Of course placements; look at the placement brochures of the institution; refer the brochures going back a couple of years minimum. Many a times they make tall claims however make it a point to interact with a few students who are already studying in the campus.
8. Reach out to Alumni community of the institution and understand where are they working and in what positions?
9. What sort of co-curricular engagements are organised by the institution? For example do they encourage a toast masters club or an AIESEC to enable leadership capabilities.
10. Please don’t look at the foreign trips offered by the institution just for the heck of visiting a new country or a free laptop that they might offer you, at your own cost. These things will follow if you do well in learning; not just academically but your focus should be to build an overall personality which will enable you find the right job.
UniGAUGE is an assessment platform under ERA Foundation. The educational rating and assessment foundation is a not for profit organisation. ERA Foundation focuses on educational assessment, rating and skill building in the higher education sector in India. We at ERA Foundation operate with a larger mission of enabling holistic improvement of the education sector through consultation and cooperation with key stakeholders including policy makers, education institutions, corporate sector and the student community. More Information about ERA Foundation is available at www.erafoundationindia.org