Baruah, You have rightly pointed out that recruiting and retaining good faculties is a big issue for academic institution. Even cities like Kanpur in India are having problem. Recently we had a meeting with a dean from IIT Kanpur while was visiting west coast. He was telling IIT Kanpur has recently lost a good number of very well known faculties (some of whom taught me while I was a undergrad student) due to lack of good colleges in the city. This became a major issue once their children started going to college. I am sure similar problem exists for places like Guwahati and Bhubaneswar. Separation of teaching from research is needed in some institutions to train the regular work force. It would be unrealistic to assume that everyone has to do research. Having said that, places like IIT Kanpur, IIT Mumbai, IISc etc. are doing phenomenal job while excelling in teaching. Some of the work in theoretical communication, algorithms, atmospheric science in early 90’s from these institutions are world class and have made a huge impact. So I will not generalize it. Regards,Dhiraj
--- On Sun, 10/26/08, [EMAIL PROTECTED] <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: [asom] Negative mention about Ghy in article To: [email protected] Date: Sunday, October 26, 2008, 4:57 AM Thanks for drawing our attention to this important article. I don?t think your point that ?Guwahati has been negatively projected,? should take away the value of the piece. I suppose you are objecting to the sentence, ?the idea of a truly world-class university (an institution that can compete with the best in the world) in cities like Guwahati or Bhubaneswar is simply unrealistic. ? I can assure you that the problem of recruiting and retaining quality faculty is very real in all good institutions in India and especially those in places like Guwahati. And it is not merely a matter of paying more. We need an entire strategy that would make basic research attractive to the younger generation and sufficient incentives for research will have to be there at all stages of an academic career. Those incentives will have to be built into the structure of the academic profession. India?s model since the 1960s has favored the separation of teaching from research. It is very hard to build ?world-class universities? based on that model. That is not the only problem, but a serious one. I worry that we are throwing money at a problem without questioning the basic model. I don't think we need many more of the same sort of "good" institutions. They may be good, but they are not "world-class. " There may be an argument for doing that to meet the future demands of industry. But it is useful to be clear about what we are doing instead of throwing around words like "world class university" that the article is objecting to. SB Quoting Pritam <[EMAIL PROTECTED] com>: Guwahati has been negatively projected in the below article dated 23rd October 2008. With institutes like IIT-G running well, I hope the authors have strong facts for their inference. http://www.thehindu .com/2008/ 10/23/stories/ 2008102355501000 .htm
