Letting our professors just profess ideas

July 11, 2024

NEW DELHI – The wise and holistic utilization of human resources is the primary and undeniable precondition for the overall development of any nation. What if Virat Kohli is compelled to play a guitar instead of playing cricket? What if Udit Narayan is compelled to author story books instead of singing? What if a Judge of any court is compelled to do the work of a typist? These will bring perils and jeopardize the existing ecosystem.

Almost the same is going on with professors teaching in colleges across the country. Professors who are supposed to confine themselves to teaching, conduct research activities, profess new ideas, examine the existing framework of knowledge, execute the curriculum and programs, and most importantly, contribute to the academic expansion of the broader discipline are miserably compelled to confine their efforts and cognitive minds in furnishing databases and associated works for the sake of institutional accreditation processes by different institutions and frameworks like National Assessment and Accreditation Council (NAAC), National Institutional Ranking Framework (NIRF), All India Survey on Higher Education (AISHE) and so on.

However, the chief purpose of this article is neither to oppose such initiatives as the accreditation process nor deriving an understanding of the quality status of the institution, nor to pose questions on the need of NAAC. Rather, the intention is to raise questions about the way the process is being implemented and engaging professors across the country in a job for which they have no special skills. In other words, it may be claimed that human resources are being misused or, to be more specific, disrupted in such a manner that harms the whole academic