Institute faculty tweaks Balakrishnan committee recommendation to have its own three-year work plan in place.
Faculty members at the Indian Institute of Management Calcutta (IIM-C) will now have to submit a three-year plan dividing their time between research, consultancy, teaching and administrative work.
Over six months on and some protests later — to the Ajit Balakrishnan Committee’s controversial recommendation of making 160 hours of classroom teaching mandatory for faculty at IIMs — faculty members at IIM-C have arrived at this solution.
“We understand that not every faculty member will be interested in all four areas. Therefore it makes sense that they divide their time up correctly in an iron clad manner and submit a three-year target plan, at the end of which they will be evaluated on target achievement,” says Ajit Balakrishnan, chairman of the IIM-C board of governors.
In April, the IIM-C faculty members in protest of the Balakrishnan committee’s recommendations, put up a paper on the institute website, refuting point by point the attempt of Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD) to implement steps to moderate faculty evaluation procedures.
An IIM-C faculty member says the present system was acceptable because it allowed the faculty some manoeuvring room in their areas of interest. This would ensure that even in the event of excess consultancy work, classroom teaching would not be compromised.
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According to the Balakrishnan committee, faculty members are required to put in about 160 hours of teaching annually against around 90 hours at present, which is the case with most IIMs. This recommendation was made to bring in a healthy development where more teaching and research happens. This, however, would have impacted the revenue of the IIMs.
Today, the bulk of the money that the IIMs generate is through the Management Development Programmes (MDPs) or executive education programmes. If they did not have these they would all still be running at a loss or just marginally breaking even.
Every IIM has a scheme that the money earned via MDPs is shared between the faculty member who carries it out and the institution. Of the 100-odd faculty at the IIMs, only 50-60 per cent are able to do MDPs. Some of them are able to earn as much as Rs 60 lakh each year. Thus there is a strong interest in carrying out MDPs. More teaching and more research would mean less MDPs and in turn less income for not only the professors but also for the IIMs.
Thus the R C Bhargava committee suggested the creation of a corpus at the IIMs where the corpus income can be used both for making IIMs financially viable and giving extra income to professors who do good work in teaching, research or conducting MDPs.
Faculty across the older IIMs had protested over the proposed norms, saying that they were unfair and had been proposed without taking into account the faculty’s stand. Since then, the faculty has been taken on board and various IIMs are looking at tackling the issue.
IIM Lucknow has, for example, instituted the 300-point system, which director Devi Singh implemented during his stint at Management Development Institute (MDI) Gurgaon.
The 300-point system allots points to the faculty for research, administration work and teaching done. Once they cross the 300-point mark, they are given bonus marks. The system itself is a method of ensuring faculty accountability, where they are evaluated on progress each year, and are subjected to their party review at the end of three years.
“The 300-point system, which has been instituted at IIM-L is a good system ensuring faculty accountability, given that it is non-threatening but still gets the purpose of evaluation sorted,” says a director of one of the new IIMs, on condition of anonymity. At IIM Ahmedabad and Bangalore, discussions are on with faculty members. IIM Bangalore, however, may stick to its 100 hours of mandatory teaching rule for now. “I am not sure about what Calcutta has done. We are sticking to 100 hours of mandatory teaching. While discussions are still on with the faculty, this rule will continue,” says Pankaj Chandra, director, IIM-Bangalore.
The faculty at IIM Ahmedabad, who had also protested the implementation of the 160-hour rule along with the method of evaluation, says they are in discussions but think that a maximum of 160 hours is a fair rule.
“I teach six courses a year plus MDPs (management development programmes), so I teach more than 160 hours in some years. I think if people have to be given time for research and institution building then 100 hours will be optimal. This can go up to a maximum of 120 hours yearly”, says Anil Gupta, professor, IIM-Ahmedabad.