110406
Swati Garg / Kolkata
Faculty members at the Indian Institute of Management-Calcutta (IIM-C) have gone on the offensive and published a paper in protest against recommendations by two committee reports for restructuring at the premier B-school.
http://www.iimcal.ac.in/IIMC-Restructuring-Position-Paper.pdf
The paper, available on the institute’s website, marks the discontent of the faculty on issues of governance, teaching hours, size of the IIM-C governing board and the fact that the faculty was left out of consultations in coming up with recommendations for change.
Among the primary issues professors are opposing are the teaching hours. According to the recommendations by the Bhargava and Balakrishnan committees, the faculty members need to cut on management or executive development programmes (MDPs) and increase time allocated to classroom teaching.
“At present, we are doing 6,900 hours of post-graduate programme teaching, which will go up to 8,000 hours with the increased student strength, in a year, in addition to teaching of at least 1,800 hours of doctoral-level courses, to be divided between the 90-odd faculty members. The accusation of limited time to classroom teaching is baseless,” said an IIM professor.
According to the professor, apart from the fact that the faculty members were not consulted when arriving at this decision, the recommendation also disregards singular requirements for time that the faculty has to allocate for classroom teaching and comes up with a blanket must-do for all.
The Balakrishnan Committee has proposed a work norm of 160 hours of classroom teaching, a proposal which has been accepted by the Ministry of Human Resource Development and now under fire from the faculty at IIM-C.
The fact that they were not consulted in coming up with the recommendations has not gone down well with the faculty members either, who are now complaining over a “unicameral” method of decision-making.
“There is a problem with the communication, given that the faculty was not consulted and opinions were excluded, especially in context of the fact that a majority of these recommendations are to do with them,” said a visiting faculty member at IIM-C on condition of anonymity.
The faculty members are also miffed at this exclusion in light of the fact that they had earlier raised concerns with respect to the previous ‘Report of IIM Review Committee’ published in 2008, which dealt with restructuring as well.
“In a bicameral governance, structure decision making is formally divided between the faculty… and the board…We believe that such attempts to exclude the faculty are to silence voices of disagreement and violate the established norms and practices of our governance,” the paper states.
Also under contention is the restructuring of the governing board and the Bhargava Committee recommendation of reducing the overall size of the board from the current 30 to 14.
“A reduction in the numbers would make it easier for a small set of individuals to gain control of our institution. A large number as suggested in our current Memorandum of Association reflects a plurality of interests in our functioning and this should be strengthened even further,” the paper states.
Under fire again is the issue of ‘enlightened ownership’, which IIM professors term “roundabout privatisation”. According to this recommendation, board members would be selected by a nominations committee comprising government representative and corporations that made donations.
“The Indian Institute of Management-Calcutta is a property of the public and placing this kind of a power in the hands of a corporate is dangerous, inasmuch as it will lead to privatisation in a roundabout manner,” said a professor from the MIS department.
Chairman of the IIM-C board and the Balakrishnan committee, Ajit Balakrishnan, who had earlier shot down any possible chances of IIM privatisation said the recommendations took into account the fact that IIMs were in differing stages of evolution.
“Recommendations have kept in place a condition of flexibility depending on faculty talent and inclination. At IIM-C the faculty presented a set of recommendations of flexibility which are under consideration,” he said.
Swati Garg / Kolkata
Faculty members at the Indian Institute of Management-Calcutta (IIM-C) have gone on the offensive and published a paper in protest against recommendations by two committee reports for restructuring at the premier B-school.
http://www.iimcal.ac.in/IIMC-Restructuring-Position-Paper.pdf
The paper, available on the institute’s website, marks the discontent of the faculty on issues of governance, teaching hours, size of the IIM-C governing board and the fact that the faculty was left out of consultations in coming up with recommendations for change.
Among the primary issues professors are opposing are the teaching hours. According to the recommendations by the Bhargava and Balakrishnan committees, the faculty members need to cut on management or executive development programmes (MDPs) and increase time allocated to classroom teaching.
“At present, we are doing 6,900 hours of post-graduate programme teaching, which will go up to 8,000 hours with the increased student strength, in a year, in addition to teaching of at least 1,800 hours of doctoral-level courses, to be divided between the 90-odd faculty members. The accusation of limited time to classroom teaching is baseless,” said an IIM professor.
According to the professor, apart from the fact that the faculty members were not consulted when arriving at this decision, the recommendation also disregards singular requirements for time that the faculty has to allocate for classroom teaching and comes up with a blanket must-do for all.
The Balakrishnan Committee has proposed a work norm of 160 hours of classroom teaching, a proposal which has been accepted by the Ministry of Human Resource Development and now under fire from the faculty at IIM-C.
The fact that they were not consulted in coming up with the recommendations has not gone down well with the faculty members either, who are now complaining over a “unicameral” method of decision-making.
“There is a problem with the communication, given that the faculty was not consulted and opinions were excluded, especially in context of the fact that a majority of these recommendations are to do with them,” said a visiting faculty member at IIM-C on condition of anonymity.
The faculty members are also miffed at this exclusion in light of the fact that they had earlier raised concerns with respect to the previous ‘Report of IIM Review Committee’ published in 2008, which dealt with restructuring as well.
“In a bicameral governance, structure decision making is formally divided between the faculty… and the board…We believe that such attempts to exclude the faculty are to silence voices of disagreement and violate the established norms and practices of our governance,” the paper states.
Also under contention is the restructuring of the governing board and the Bhargava Committee recommendation of reducing the overall size of the board from the current 30 to 14.
“A reduction in the numbers would make it easier for a small set of individuals to gain control of our institution. A large number as suggested in our current Memorandum of Association reflects a plurality of interests in our functioning and this should be strengthened even further,” the paper states.
Under fire again is the issue of ‘enlightened ownership’, which IIM professors term “roundabout privatisation”. According to this recommendation, board members would be selected by a nominations committee comprising government representative and corporations that made donations.
“The Indian Institute of Management-Calcutta is a property of the public and placing this kind of a power in the hands of a corporate is dangerous, inasmuch as it will lead to privatisation in a roundabout manner,” said a professor from the MIS department.
Chairman of the IIM-C board and the Balakrishnan committee, Ajit Balakrishnan, who had earlier shot down any possible chances of IIM privatisation said the recommendations took into account the fact that IIMs were in differing stages of evolution.
“Recommendations have kept in place a condition of flexibility depending on faculty talent and inclination. At IIM-C the faculty presented a set of recommendations of flexibility which are under consideration,” he said.
No comments:
Post a Comment