Dear Students,
LAST WEEK WE ASKED:
Are visiting faculty members a boon to B-schools?
BEST RESPONSE
Today, with management institutes mushrooming and the race to provide quality contemporary education hotting up, visiting faculty are enjoying their moment in the sun. By employing guest lecturers, B-schools would also be able to tide over the acute faculty crunch as more and more senior corporate managers are accepting responsibility of conducting full courses. B- schools should develop a model where they can have visiting faculty from across the globe. The industry needs experts in Internet marketing or supply chain management. But it's difficult to get faculty with expertise in teaching these new-age courses. Part time faculty employment can address this problem as well.
OTHER RESPONSES
It has become need of the hour for B-schools to appoint visiting faculties, irrespective of whether they may have adequate domestic professors, who are invariably qualified, but tend to have limited practical experience and updated industrial exposure. Visiting faculties add diversity to the knowledge of students and on the other hand, save the attrition rate of faculties in institutes. Especially post sixth-pay commission, these 'Briefcase faculties' turn out to be cheaper. As such lower-rung B-schools also get a chance to subscribe and highlight their names with branded professors.
—Ridim Agarwal, Entrepreneurship Development Institute of India (EDI), Ahmedabad
There are over 2,400 B-schools in India which together have nearly 190,000 seats for a total pool of 350,000-400,000 MBA aspirants who sit for the national and state-level MBA entrance exams. As per a report, the mushrooming of management institutes has lead to a shortage of nearly 30 per cent in terms of faculty members.To fill this faculty shortage, business institutes depend on visiting faculty. Visiting faculty are mostly domain experts who mostly hold top corporate positions, these faculty members not only help to fill the faculty requirements, but also helps the institutes to build valuable corporate contacts. This kind of a resource sharing amongst B-Schools prove to be a boon to them by helping them in keeping their cost low and enabling them in offering more number of electives.
However, having full time faculty inculcates a research based learning pedagogy for the students.
A visiting faculty is one who takes lectures whenever and wherever required. Increase in B-Schools from 1500 to 3000, vacant seats from 60,000 to 70,000 and faculty crunch, encourages the need of visiting faculties. They can be a boon to B-schools provided industry stalwarts are targeted for the role. They can easily draw from their professional experience and focus on real case studies. It would reduce the gap between theory and its practical application. A judicious mix of permanent and visiting faculty would also help B-schools effectively manage their operating expenses.
A typical 'Scooter faculty' would not be too qualified, but sufficiently proficient in pulling off a lecture on basic management subjects at low-rigour B-schools. Some would be in the profession because they did not get a job anywhere else after completing an MBA or a PGDM from a lower-rung B-school. B- schools could also help such management graduates at the same time have an eye on their cost factor of hiring faculty as well. Inviting good and efficient part time faculty who have specialised in their domain would make sessions interesting for the students. Such visiting faculty would not only benefit the students but B-schools should insist that their full-time faculty also attend such sessions by part-time faculty so that they also get specific inputs from such lectures.
Yes, ‘visiting faculty’ is a boon indeed as it allows college administration to hire them depending on their performance and requirement. An added advantage is that the colleges can then negotiate the rates per hour of course taught by the visiting faculty. While one crucial stakeholder is missing, i.e. students one wonders how students’ will clear their doubts because the faculty is not assured to be where when need arises. Faculty are not just teachers, they are guides and mentors also. Mentorship cannot take place till professors keep shuffling.
Not every student is lucky enough to get into an IIMs or XLRI or IITs and other top notch institutes, thanks to the few seats on offer. Yet, due to visiting faculty, a larger chunk of students get a chance to experience the same quality of teaching at their own b-school, thereby cutting the gap between themselves and the premium management schools. Visiting faculty from the top b-schools of India and the corporate houses bring newer and innovative perspectives for the students to ponder over but also assist in easing the pressure from the permanent faculty.
In-house faculties guide students to understand the basic fundamentals from books while industry professionals groom them to deal with upcoming industry challenges, standards and managerial skills at international level. Faculties from renowned colleges, civil services bring their best learning practices and ideas to institute which makes students competitive. Institutes can leverage skill-set, quality and knowledge base of its faculty with a proper mix of visiting to core faculty ratio. B-schools can enjoy all these facilities at affordable price. Finally, it also helps to build an industry network and in today’s world ‘network’ is net-worth!
Visiting faculties are more like a bridge between the students and the industry. Being experts in their respective fields, they share their valuable knowledge with the students. It given an opportunity to the students to get the knowledge of the management exercises practiced in the corporate world. They definitely share an important role by sharing their knowledge with the B-School students and the more they visit the campus the better for B-schools.
A visiting faculty at the B- school is a core part of an MBA programme, where the students interact and learn new skills from them. It enhance the students knowledge and also they get an advantage to know the corporate scenario before entering into the corporate world, it also adds value for a particular subject if there is a visiting faculty so they will have practical experience and hence will make them lead on the road towards success.
In my view, it is the permanent faculties which reflects the true brand of a B-school. Visiting faculties who are specialists in their fields, having a wide industry exposure, can be appointed for teaching some electives. But it is permanent teachers which are capable of imparting the knowledge more efficiently to the students. Visiting faculties are an integral part of the system, but a B-school should not rely entirely on them. Innovation in the teaching methods and proper training of permanent teachers can blend with the industry expertise of visiting faculties to form a strong base of education in the creative minds of future entrepreneurs and managers across the globe.
Visiting faculty members are a boon as long as they provide quality education, industrial interaction, supplement core faculty et al. AICTE needs to carefully look at the current issue of core faculty shortage and should also come up with proper guidelines for visiting faculty members.
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THIS WEEK'S QUESTION: Do you think IITs or IIMs are good institutions because of their students and not faculty members?
