Daily Post 1255
FACULTY ROADBLOCK
What should have been the biggest facilitator and catalyst for bringing in knowledge, expertise and skills both for the adoption of transformative digital technologies and cyber security have become the biggest bottlenecks of the day – the faculty. Institution after institution this fact is coming to light and the managements are trying via media with adhoc / temporary / guest / honorary faculty arrangements with the industry. It seems as if it is the problem of the industry and the managements to make good serious lacunae of the faculty.
It’s is sad commentary on our existence that students of the schools and general colleges are bereft of any training or education on Cyber Security and the correct usage of social media which is engulfing us like nothing else before. The status of the faculty with regards to Cyber Security is much worse. They are totally disconnected with the real world. The reorientation by way worldly knowledge and skilling for the real world has to start here.
This transformation to a responsible digital living will neither happen on its own nor will it happen with one off seminars / lectures and some short and forgotten courses. The faculty have to be trained comprehensively. It’s not an option, as it has be be inculcated in the next generation, through them. The faculty besides teaching are mostly in touch with the students, they are the role models, when they are seen as having the requisite knowledge and practising it, the students would automatically follow.
If the industry does not get the engineers / professionals who are fit to be employed, then who is to be blamed? The onus falls squarely on the teaching faculty. If Industry was fine with students of yesteryears, what is the problem today? The problem is that the world moved ahead and they remained static. It is the intensive skilling of faculty members on a mass scale is the answer. By the same logic of industry ready, if the lecturer is not engineering college ready, he need not be taken or thrown out anytime later if he does not remain so, all throughout. A neat criteria has to be evolved.
FACULTY HAS BECOME THE MISSING LINK OF OUR EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM.