HiEd Log

  When a dental college student died by suicide recently, one of the voice recordings he left behind problematised the staff room. His stark comment was that it is a space where teachers “attack” in a group—a task in which each tries to outdo the other. Though we can't generalise, this is a statement that has understandably unsettled all right-thinking members of the academic community, irrespective of whether they see themselves reflected in that description. It carries disturbing implications about the nature of the staff room and compels us to ask how many of us may have, knowingly or unknowingly, contributed to such an experience. The unease lies not only in the explicit forms of misconduct that may occur in such spaces, but also in the larger web of interactions the student alludes to. One begins to wonder about the comments casually made, the nods, the silences, the half-smiles—small gestures that may have cumulatively shaped such a perception. The phrase “attacking as a grou...

  We know the capacity of market forces to rise to the occasion and cash in on emerging trends, and they do not spare academics either. The DTP industry, which has long minted money by offering customised undergraduate and postgraduate projects, proved early on that the market is always alert to opportunities opened up by academia. The same vigour was (and still is) displayed by firms offering what is euphemistically termed consultancy, ostensibly to help educational institutions ace accreditation. Now, to that list, we may add Internship Shops, as the FYUGP has made internships mandatory. These shops are already opening in Kerala. A recent example of the academisation of internships involved a group of students from an Arts and Science college spending a couple of days in a Management Institute attending soft-skills sessions. Interestingly, this short period of activity-oriented classroom training was labelled an internship, I later learned. Basic communication skills, presentatio...