Comments on: Vice-Chancellor, NLSIU: Yes, Permitted http://www.nlsquirks.in/vice-chancellor-nlsiu-yes-permitted/ Wed, 27 Feb 2019 12:09:32 +0000 hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=4.9.10 By: Sidharth Chauhan http://www.nlsquirks.in/vice-chancellor-nlsiu-yes-permitted/#comment-2 Sat, 28 Nov 2015 22:45:15 +0000 https://nlsquirks.wordpress.com/?p=44#comment-2 A Vice-Chancellor is supposed to be both the academic and administrative head of an educational institution. Prof. R. Venkata Rao has certainly been proactive on the administrative front, especially in terms of ensuring quick approvals and generous financial support for student activities, hosting conferences as well as authorizing fresh construction. These are tangible goods which are immediately visible to stakeholders such as current students, administrative staff and members of NLSIU’s governing bodies. However, his performance on the academic side has been horrendous and undeniably the worst among the five heads of institution that NLSIU has had so far. There has not been a regularisation of faculty members since 2006. This means that substantial reliance has been placed on teachers in ad-hoc positions for several years. Barring a few exceptions, these ad-hoc teachers either consist of recent LL.M. graduates (who barely have any exposure in the subjects that they are asked to teach) or retired professors from larger universities who are simply not accustomed to the intensive academic environment that had been painstakingly cultivated at NLSIU. This has led to sub-standard teaching and evaluation in most of the mandatory courses. The best faculty members have either retired or left for other institutions, thereby only leaving a handful of teachers who are truly committed to academic excellence. In the long run, the full-time faculty is the true backbone of the institution.

There is also the myth that a highly selective admissions process ensures that the best students are attracted to the institution. While the applicant pool for the CLAT exam has been increasing, there is no guarantee that this is correlated with better potential for learning among incoming students. In fact, there have been numerous anomalies in the CLAT process in recent years which are reason enough to cast doubts on the presumptive quality of students. Furthermore, the highly selective nature of the school has bred a misguided sense of complacency among students. Current students assume that academic and professional success will follow simply because of their admission in a prestigious institution. This disincentivizes students from putting in the effort required to improve their comprehension, research and articulation skills. In a bid to be popular with students, Prof. Venkata Rao has repeatedly used his personal discretion to grant numerous concessions such as undue extension of term paper deadlines, condonation of massive attendance shortages and worst of all the untrammeled use of the provisions for re-evaluation of written exams so as to ensure that students get passing marks despite having initially failed by big margins. This is nothing short of academic corruption and has damaged both the institution and the students’ prospects in the long-run. Till date, the student body at NLSIU has not initiated an honest public conversation about these malpractices. It is easy to be bought over with such short-term doles. However, in the long run his tenure will prove to be disastrous for the school. I say this as a concerned alumnus and not because of my termination from an ad-hoc teaching position in February 2013.

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