The Karnataka Government Order on increasing teaching hours from 16 to 22 hours for College Teachers is un-academic in its conceptualisation and unscientific in its execution.
Academic standards including hours of teaching are set by the University Grants Commission (UGC) in its guidelines and is determined by academicians. Teaching and Research must go hand in hand in higher education as knowledge dissemination is the outcome of knowledge generation and the experience and practice of both must be acquired by teachers and imparted to students. Therefore, UGC is right in its wisdom of stipulating 16 hours of teaching and 6 hours of research per week for the college teachers. Besides, 22 hours of teaching alone per week is too much of an unhealthy rush both for preparation and delivery that is not in the interest of productive education. In academic institutions, the academics alone must be the last word and it brooks no excuses like lack of funds and infrastructure, they must be provided for the quality of teacher and students in particular and of education in general.
Hence, the decision of the Karnataka Government in this regard is totally un-academic and arbitrary, and smacks of some ulterior motive that is other than education. If many teachers are not engaging in research, Government must investigate the reason behind it and redress the same to the advantage of teachers to engage in research rather than forego it.
Government should not to come in the way of quality education with non-academic excuses and see that opportunities are provided for teachers to take up research for 6 hours and teaching for 16 hours per week. In case the teachers do not take up research in spite of the enabling condition provided, then Government can always take appropriate action against such teachers