The engineering colleges of Gujarat have come up with an innovative and equally effective idea to cope up with the acute shortage of teachers and other faculty members in their organizations over the past few years. The measure is set to set an example for the rest of the educational sphere in terms of foresight and applied innovation.
In a few days, the nation will witness the unique concept of inducting students as teachers who will teach side by side beside their own professors to help the institutes of counter the shortage of faculty. The arrangements thus made in this order will not at all be temporary in effect but will be entirely official and permanent in nature.
It is a step initiated by the Gujarat Technical University (GTU) itself which wants to put an end to the shortage of faculty in the colleges so that the education standards never drop below certain optimum level. It has been estimated that as many as around 1700 faculty posts are lying vacant over the past few years due to which the academic environment and development is getting persistently hampered.
Recently, GTU conducted an examination in this regard where they enrolled the top 10% students of every college branch. As colleges can enrol at the most 60 students in each branch, this automatically means that every branch of a college will yield as many as 6 students who can be inducted as faculty members.
A sordid example of acute shortage of faculty, the famous L D College of Engineering admits 1505 students every year while their faculty includes a standard of 53 professors but sadly as many as 44 of those posts lie vacant. Likewise, the number of assistant professors is scheduled to be around 105 out of which 57 lie vacant.
A professor of the same college has said, “This venture has been named ‘Bridge Course’ owing to the role that the students are meant to play. The idea to make students come forward and extent a helping hand to their faculty is nothing but a means to bridge the gap between the freshers and the faculty.”
It has been scheduled that the top students will get themselves involved in active learning in order to alleviate themselves to the teaching standards of a faculty so that they can actively help the students in their studies. Students picked from each stream will assist the faculty by helping the students in their project work, seminars and other academic activities. In the absence of faculty staff, these said students will act as their substitutes.
“Our college has picked 20% of the top students from each stream in order to assist the faculty as we have a shortage of 50% of the intended number of professors and teaching staff in the college. The students will assist their fellow students in place of their professors and lecturers. Each student involved in this course will get credits for the subject that he is teaching,” said principal M R Patel, Vishwakarma Engineering College, Chandkheda.