Expectations Higher Educational Institutions
Institutes of higher education are expected to provide knowledge, know-how, wisdom and character to the students enabling them to understand what they learn in relation to what they already know, create ability to generalise from their experiences, take them beyond merely understanding and enabling them to put their knowledge to work, make them capable of deciding their priorities and together synthesize their effect of knowledge to work, make them capable of deciding their priorities and together synthesize their effect of knowledge, know-how and wisdom, coupled with motivation. Character is recognized by important traits, viz., honesty, integrity, initiative, curiosity, truthfulness, co-operativeness, self-esteem and ability to work alone and in a group; however, most of the educational institutions hardly pay any attention to the development of either wisdom or character.
Many educators have not developed wisdom themselves and hence throw up their hands at the thought of imparting it to the students; they think these elements are to be taken care of by someone else. Wisdom and character, the two important human qualities, are best developed by making students participate in creative team activities, wherein they learn to set priorities, to work together, and to develop the social skills required in a society where teamwork is essential to success.
Faculty’s Role
Educational institutes are a system of inter-dependent processes comprising of collection of highly specialized teaching faculty; every faculty is a process manager, facilitates students with opportunities for personal growth and presides over the transformation of inputs to outputs of greater value to the institute and to the ultimate stakeholder. Students enjoy and take pride through learning and accomplishment, hence are active contributors in the process, and are valued for their creativity and intelligence. Teachers work in a system, whereas the Head of an institute works on the system and continuously improves the quality with the help of teachers; students study and learn in a system, and the teachers have to continuously work on the system to improve the teaching quality with the help of students. It takes a quality experience to create an independent learner, teachers must discuss with the students of what constitutes a quality experience for them; yhe objective of quality management is to continuously seek a better way of imparting education to the students. Everyone in the system is expected, invited, and trained to participate in the improvement process, rather than just be dictated from the top administration.
Author: Dr. Savita Sihag
