This refers to Dr Mahnaz
Fatima’s article entitled ‘Faculty Assessment: Another view’ published in Dawn (26 October 2003) on the education
page. Dr Fatima has kindly noticed my article on the subject (Dawn 19 October) giving the outlines of
the point- weightage system. My idea was to present a tentative formula to
evaluate the performance of academics. In short, I envisage giving points to
university faculty for (1) research (2) lecturing (3) supervision of research
work (4) presenting papers in learned conferences etc. The idea is to quantify
their achievement so that other people cannot manipulate to put down those who
are capable and promote those who are not. As I said before, the idea is not
final nor has any authority dealing with higher education agreed to impose it
without presenting it to the universities and consulting the faculty. It does
not come from anyone else; it is a personal effort to introduce some kind of
objectivity in assessing the academic worth of faculty members. Indeed Such
quantification is available in science and has been presented for the social
sciences by others in many countries. The idea should, of course, be disputed
and criticized and changed. Thus, I take this opportunity to thank Dr. Mahnaz
Fatima who has taken the effort to write about it.
Let me, however, allay the
writers’ fears as far as I can. First, she says that the conditions in the
universities are not conducive for research. If one is to get published in
indexed journals as I have proposed, one should have access to both secondary
and primary sources. This is true and I have written several times that this is
absolutely necessary for research. Without providing these laboratory, library,
archival and field research facilities it would be highly unfair to lay down
stringent conditions for research for university faculty. So, I fully agree
with this observation.
Secondly, she says that
academic freedom is required for free and impartial research. This too is
correct. Once again I have always championed the cause of academic freedom.
However, except, in the social sciences---politics, history, education,
religion etc---there is already enough academic freedom to conduct any kind of
research. Even in the social sciences one knows scholars who have tested the
freedom they have and come to the conclusion that much can be written without
dire consequences. The fact is that it is not because of the lack of
freedom---though I agree that there should be more and guaranteed freedom---that
academics do not write. They do not write for other reasons. The first reason
is that our salaries and other conditions are not such as to attract the best
brains in the country so we do not have many people who have the potential to
be scholars and scientists to begin with. The second reason is that they can
get promoted without producing good research or even good lecturing so why make
the effort to do either. And, of course the third reason is that our
universities lack good libraries, we do not have an inter-library loan system
and we do not provide research assistants to even our highest ranking
professors. These are the main reasons we lack good scientists and scholars.
Dr Fatima is also
apprehensive about who will assess the individual academic? I too have this
apprehension. That is why I suggested in an earlier article that a departmental
committee with the person who is being assessed as a part of it will assess him
or her. The proof of publication is the copy or offprint of the article. Every indexed
journal is given in Ulrich’s
International Bibliography and is also on the internet. The number of
indexes a journal is on can be read from there and points can be calculated.
Similarly, points for other academic activities can be calculated. For the
scientists an impact measuring system is already available and can be used. The
proposed system is much better than the ACR system which is subjective and
unsuited to universities. It is also better than the promotion board which has
no knowledge about the scholarly or teaching ability of the person who is being
assessed. Thus both the writers of ACRs and a members of the promotion board
are subjective and sometimes politicized. Under the proposed system bias is
easier to eliminate than under any other system of evaluation.
This system also makes it
possible to get evaluated from students and from one’s colleagues if one so
desires. No previous systems of assessment---indeed there is hardly any except
the ACR or appointment board type of subjective assessment at present---is so
transparent and so objective as this one is. Moreover, the system need not be
imposed on the present faculty who should continue to serve in the present pay
scales till they retire. It should be offered as a choice to people who want
higher salaries and social status and who would go to the private sector if the
public universities do not satisfy them. The system should also be available to
those who want to join the universities now. After all, with high salaries we
should be able to attract competent people. And if they are competent why
should they be afraid of having some transparent way of evaluating them
provided it does not compromise their dignity and is not forced upon them. If
we are asking the society to pay academics very highly; them we have also got
the right to expect academics to be demonstrably competent. But, of course, any
attempt to impose stringent conditions of competence without providing
facilities for research would be unjust. Here I agree with Dr. Mahnaz Fatima
and join her and others like her in demanding state-of-the-art libraries,
laboratories, research assistants and other facilities.