Professor of Practice scheme of UGC will lead to an overall improvement in the quality, employability and outcomes of higher education in India and is therefore a welcome step of the government
University Grants Commission, New Delhi has notified guidelines for engaging “Professors of Practice” in higher education institutions, in the month of October, 2022 in consonance with the recommendations of National Education Policy, 2020. Main objectives of this scheme are to boost industry-academia interaction and address burgeoning skill-gap and supply-demand gap in our higher education sector by developing courses and curricula that meet industry demands as well as societal needs and enabling academicians to work in communion with industry experts on joint research projects, outreach, extension and consultancy services that will be mutually beneficial to both of them. It seeks to invite distinguished experts and persons of eminence from diverse fields and give them an opportunity to contribute towards experiential learning, applied research, practical training, upskilling, entrepreneurship and mentoring of students. Through this initiative it is desired to bring professional expertise from the industry into the academic institutions through a new category of positions called “Professor of Practice”. This will help in bringing real world practices and experiences into the class rooms through lab-based practicals, computer-based simulations, field-based practices and industry-based internships, besides augmenting the faculty resources in higher education institutions. In turn, both industry and society will benefit from trained graduates equipped with relevant skills, competencies and knowledge.
Through this scheme eminent experts from the industry working at senior administrative and managerial levels for more than fifteen years at a stretch and those with significant contributions and skills in production, marketing, research and development, finance, communication, human resource management, journalism, performing and fine arts, literature, judiciary, defence, bureaucracy, hotel management, engineering, science, technology, entrepreneurship, commerce, social sciences, community and rural development etc can be designated as Professors of Practice in higher education institutions for a period ranging anywhere between one to four years and subsequently engaged to teach the students and transfer their skills and practical knowledge to them against consolidated emoluments to be fixed through mutual consensus and on the basis of teaching workload. Up to ten percent of the sanctioned strength of teaching faculty of an institution can comprise the professors of practice and their number will be over and above the total sanctioned staff strength of the institution. This way teaching pedagogy would be largely based on experiential, problem-solving, practice and case-based learning. Students would learn a lot from the lifetime experiences of these professors and will get to understand the real-life situations, problems and challenges experienced by them as well as the means and methods to deal with them. Classroom theories and research would translate into practice and students would be in a better position to meet the contemporary demands of the industry and dynamic job markets of the world.
It is said that practice makes a man perfect and an ounce of practice is more worthy than tons of preaching. Knowledge actually has no meaning unless it is practiced and practice means to perform, over and over again in the face of all obstacles and adversities. Times have gone by when teachers would endlessly teach and preach without bringing their theories into practice and without demonstrating the real-life problems and challenges in executing the lessons learnt in a classroom. Professor of practice scheme essentially aims at transforming higher education by focusing on skill-based learning with a view to meet needs of the industry, modern society and economy. As per India Skills Report of 2022, the widening skill gap in Indian higher education is the major reason for rising unemployment. It has revealed that among eight million graduates passing out every year only 50,000 are equipped with much required ‘future skills’. According to a 2019 NASSCOM survey, India produces 15 lakh engineering graduates every year, however, only 2.5 lakh of them succeed in getting jobs in the core engineering industry. Similarly, another survey by “Aspiring Minds” reported that 80 per cent of Indian engineers were unemployed in 2019. A mismatch has also emerged between the skills that the industry needs, such as artificial intelligence, machine learning and data analytics, and what is actually being taught in the classrooms, leading to a supply-demand gap in talent acquisition. As a result of the Govt. of India’s added emphasis upon skill development over the past few years, overall employability of Indian graduates has increased from 40.44% in 2017 to 50.3% in 2023 as per India Skills Report.
Skill development has been identified within the Sustainable Development Goals framework as SDG Goal 8 entitled, “Decent work and Economic Growth”, that reflects the need to increase economic productivity, reduce unemployment and devise development-oriented policies with a special focus on women and youth in rural areas. Census 2011 was indicative of the imminent ‘demographic dividend’ in India by the year 2020 with 65% Indians under the age of 35, thus making India the youngest country in the world. This was seen as an advantage to meet the demand for 109.73 million skilled workers across India by the year 2022 (NSDC, 2014). However, National Sample Survey Office (NSSO) data reflects that out of the 470 million working age population, only 10% receive some kind of training or access to skilled employment opportunities in India. This clearly indicates a largescale demand-supply gap in the skill development avenues. Moreover, demographic dividend could even lead to demographic disadvantage as the large number of unskilled and semi-skilled youth population forming base of the labour force within the country could end up in low productivity and lower wages as a fall out of this skill gap. In order to bridge these gaps, skill development has been made one of the national priorities by the government in the last decade and positive changes have been witnessed in India’s skill development framework. Professor of Practice scheme of the University Grants Commission is meant to address this skill-gap and supply-demand gap by inculcating right kind of skillsets among our youth and harnessing their potential to be industry-ready by the time they graduate from their colleges and universities.
Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), USA started appointing Professors and Associate Professors of Practice way back in the year 1997. Other top academic institutions like Harvard, Yale, Princeton and Columbia University also have rosters of leading practitioners, many of whom teach on part-time basis. Early this year Columbia University engaged Hillary Rodham Clinton, the former U.S. Secretary of State, as professor of practice at its School of International and Public Affairs. However, this scheme has been introduced for the first time in India as a follow-up of the implementation of NEP-2020 with a view to promote internships, industry visits, apprenticeship, mentorship, innovation, entrepreneurship and start-up culture in our higher education institutions. Though foreign institutions allow serving and retired teaching faculty too to serve as professors of practice, in India it has been for the time being restricted to experienced and senior level experts from the field and industry with a view to give them an opportunity to transfer their knowledge, skills, competencies and expertise to the students even if they do not possess regular academic qualifications like PG or Ph.D. and do not have any scientific publications to their credit as a result of which they might feel constrained to enter an academic institution and interact with the students. Therefore, to begin with this scheme has been restricted only for industry personnel in India and with the passage of time it might get extended to serving and retired teaching faculty as well. However, at present focus is only on actual practitioners in the field.
Higher education institutions intending to implement this scheme have to constitute a committee of two senior professors from within and one from outside the institution that will invite or accept nominations from the field and industry experts and scrutinize them on the basis of their requirements and will subsequently engage them as PoPs with due approval of their statutory bodies like academic and executive councils. Before setting out on this path colleges and universities shall have to identify the programmes where there is need to engage PoPs and prioritize them on their need-basis. Suitable emoluments have to be fixed through mutual consultation for such appointees and their services have to be availed for the required period of time. Engagement of PoPs could be funded either by the industry or by the higher education institutions or as the case may be, they might even choose to work on honorary basis. Importance of this scheme can be gauged from the fact that there could be no better person to teach journalism than a chief editor who has been successfully publishing a reputed newspaper or a chef who has been working in a five-star hotel or a judge who has been serving in a high court or sessions court or an agriculturist who has been growing and supplying food or a musician who has been performing successfully for more than fifteen years. They will be well-versed with all the pros and cons, real-life problems, issues and challenges confronted in that particular field on day-to-day basis and therefore the best resource persons to learn that subject from. This will not snatch anything away from the regular teaching faculty working on substantive basis in our academic institutions because the presence of professors of practice at the campuses will not affect their career or promotion prospects and on the contrary, they will get an opportunity to network with the industry. In nutshell, Professor of Practice scheme will lead to an overall improvement in the quality, employability and outcomes of higher education in India and is therefore a highly welcome step of the government.
