The burning matter of discussion in India is that ‘education and innovation’ or ‘education or innovation’. Almost every discussion withheld in dispute. The education system mars innovative skills and makes students to take risk. It also forces students to comply with the standardised template, and it dissuades failure as well as departure from the standardised average. But it remains indifferent to the outliers.
The refrain is true because there many components that lead to lots of problems from beginning with admission in the education course at the pre-school level. For instance, in higher education the rate of attending lectures by students is poor and one more fact that the duration of their concentration on the lectures is also mediocre.
But generally, in the USA and Western Europe, the average duration is 15 hours, and there is difference between learning hours and classroom hours. The aim of their classroom contact is to make the students learn instead of teaching, and this process can happen even outside classroom contact. In those countries it appears that through instructive teaching and classroom contact, a student spends two hours on direct learning, so 15 hours of classroom teaching turns into 45 hours of weekly learning.
The University Grants Commission (UGC) announced a choice-based credit system in 2015. This made higher education more pliable but still it controversial as there were other reasons too. This new system defines education follows: ‘Credit: A unit by which the course work is measured. It determines the number of hours of instruction required per week. One credit is equivalent to one hour of teaching (lecture or tutorial) or two hours of practical work/field work per week’. A student earned credits in every semester are a summation of lecture with tutorial and practical work.
On the other hand, practical work and field work is meant for science subjects and, in cases of social sciences, student learning includes classroom contact and tutorials. According to a survey, some students of Delhi University said, “We attend around 28 hours of lectures every week and around 40 hours including tutorials and practical work”. But the duration of lectures was typically 55 minutes, not one hour, so a minor difference was traced. It is supposed that 40–45 hours is the norm for almost all of the universities in India. It is clear by this that the students either have no time to learn on their own or spend 120 hours on learning including the multiple of two times.
The learning process generally goes on for around 80 hours per week instead of 120 hours, as there are only 168 hours in a week. But according to the Factories Act one should work between 18 and 48 hours per week, but not more than that. So, this principle should be applied in case of students; we should not make them slog for 80 hours. The norm should also confirm that students who do not learn on their own should be marked that never think on the subjects they are learning. The classroom teaching from student learning should be delinked as maximum number of students reproduces their lessons by rote learning. The advanced countries have now accepted that fifteen hours of classroom teaching is good enough for the students while their outside classroom learning duration is longer.
What is the output of classroom learning? In other cases, the difference between input and outcomes are appreciable. Why cannot it be possible for higher education? That norm of 40 hours of lectures every week is the result of workloads incumbent to teachers. There is a minimal difference between assistant professors, associate professors and professors as they have to teach for about 15 hours per week inclusive of 30 hours of tutorials in total 45 hours per week. Tutorials involve physical contact with the teacher as don’t form any independent student learning.
In short, students have to attend 40 or 45 hours of lectures every week since teachers teach for 45 hours. However, in the USA, credits emanates the duration in Carnegie Units, pioneered by Carnegie Foundation to decide retirement pensions for professors. Contemporarily, Morris Llewellyn Cooke prepared a report, entitled ‘Academic and Industrial Efficiency’, for Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching in 1872. The objective was to systematise faculty workloads, simultaneously to use this as a measure to deliver education. Obviously, it goes on well parallel to factories and industrial production, a little like Ford Motor Company which uses mass production to manufacture Model T cars: ‘Any customer can have a car painted any colour that he wants so long as it is black’.
But higher education is unlike factory production in reality. It is quite logical to repeat Henry Ford, “I will build a car for the great multitude. It will be large enough for the family, but small enough for the individual. But it will be so low in price that no man making a good salary will be unable to own one”. But other countries, especially the European ones, have achieved a considerable improvement in the field of education by overcoming such dysfunctional ideas on the basis of their standards and guidelines for quality assurance, the European Higher Education Area 2015. It is high time, India should undertake such initiatives. qqq