‘Encourage the creamy layer to take up teaching’

Quality of education in state, availability of good teachers and other related issues that confront higher education surfaced in a lecture delivered by Jayanthi Ravi, commissioner of higher education on Friday.

Ravi was deliberating on the topic 'Transforming Higher Education" where she raised a point about lack of interest shown by creamy layer of students towards being part of academics. She lamented that professional courses get more takers which has to a certain extent created a void in quality teaching in the science stream.

Referring to the dismal performance in Std XII science stream results - lowest in six years - which was announced on Thursday, Ravi explained that there is a fundamental gap. "When we keep talking about Jaago Re campaign, isn't it possible to bring together best of minds from across the country towards taking up teaching as profession?" she asked, while suggesting that intellectuals from corporate and other fields too should
donate time to education.

She further said that in order to transform higher education, there is a need to bring back life and soul in to the otherwise dead classrooms. She also shared details of the study she had done for the research work conducted for the thesis. Mentioning about her interaction with youngsters during government promoted educational initiatives, Ravi said majority of the students expressed the desire to become teachers.

"Of 10 students I interacted, around 8 students say they want to be teachers," she said, while stating that she doesn't mean to belittle the present scenario, but quipped: "I don't know what happens between standard 2 and standard 12 when those very students will sell everything but not become teachers!"

To bring quality in to teaching, she suggested people to be part of the process of transforming higher education. "Maybe they can spend three months to six months with children and work with them to make changes in their lives. This could be done in the form of corporate social responsibility which is generally done by donating money worth in crores," she said. Ravi's book; The Multiversity model for Transformation was also released education minister Ramanlal Vora while management guru G Narayana, chief secretary AK Joti also graced the occasion.

Talking about the findings of her research, she said that of the interviewed students around 97.25% showed interest in research and online research, 96% emphasised on inclusion of dimensions like physical, aesthetic and spiritual to be part of the curriculum and course. Around 65%  said that they would like to dedicate 10% of their time in reading biography and autobiography of scientist, technocrats, sportsperson, thinkers among other mentionables.