Of late, this scribe has noted with amusement how upstarts and riffraff go around hankering after positions for which they do not even have the minimum credentials. This is not entirely new. In the past, too, such cases were known and some of them succeeded in netting coveted jobs, which even those with creditable background were deprived of.The practice deteriorated since the 1990s when political leaders, on the strength of people’s “mandate”, began to misuse their power for awarding jobs to individuals more on the basis of proximity and loyalty than on anything to do with merit. The trend has been worse in the recent years.
NEED & DEMAND
As a result, individuals without any managerial experience—or for that matter, who never held any regular position anywhere—suddenly, land themselves in privileged positions heading an institution entailing significant responsibility demanding knowledge and experience. The situation has gone so bad that the academic sector is also being a target for similar malpractice. While there are every now and then a controversy or two regarding appointments and promotions in any sector these days, the area this scribe seeks to narrate here pertains to new higher level educational institutions.
First the background.
In the higher education sector, the designation of a professor sounds satisfactory to many people within and outside the academic fold, including journalists. As per a talk circulating in the capital city, some “senior” journalists and a few working in different branches of mass communication are angling for professorship solely on the strength of their hands-on experience and without any matching academic experience the position requires. They do not even have any notable books on media. In fact, they rarely write anything on issues media and media functioning. Writing in media-related journals and being associated with media research do no constitute any part of their experience. Books on relevant topics are confined, at best, to their dreams.
In the past, some of them are known to have made faces at university teaching jobs as something to do with only “theories” and hence not exciting and only boring routine. Yet the same lot these days are querying and pushing around to pull their strings to net professorship or “even an associate professorship, to begin with”. Mass communicators of one form or the other, without any academic teaching background and substantive academic work, are after professorship. Some of them occasionally serve as “visiting lecturers”, as if enough to go around introducing themselves as “associate professor” or “professor”.
If the government were to give a go-ahead, at least a dozen applications requesting for opening new universities would be set in motion. Quite a few “experts” are angling for positions not as a lecturer, assistant professor or an associate professor. All these members of the Fourth Estate want to become professors overnight. Good luck to them but a greater luck is called for the students who become their campus wards.
Whenever someone is called “an expert”, I ask whether the expertise is visible and substantive. Quite often, the “expertise” is based on an appointment netted by virtue of being close to a politico, only to be kicked out or compelled to step down soon after a government changeover.
In the case of Journalism and Mass Communication, the Tribhuvan University introduced the course for intermediate level at Ratna Rajya Laxmi Campus in 1976, with Lal Dhoj Deusa Rai as the first staff. Rai did most of the spadework and eventually left practising journalism as the features editor in The Rising Nepal to take to full time teaching.
In establishing Bachelor’s level course four years later, Patan Multiple Campus took the initiative when Ratna Rajya at that time was reluctant to do so. Two senior journalists of the day were approached for the initiative but one of them simply could not spare any time for the task, the other was willing to work “part time” only because of his other busy schedules. The third choice fell on this humbly, then working as a senior reporter in The Rising Nepal.
I took the lecturer’s assignment, concurrently with my job at TRN, as a challenge and opportunity. This generally meant completing late afternoon stories only after the night classes were over at Patan, which meant that returning home only after 9 p.m. As soon as the first batch of B.A. journalism students passed out, students at Ratna Rajya exerted pressure on the campus management to introduce the Bachelor’s course in their campus.
(IN)CONVENIENCE
In the absence of fresh students from RR joining Patan campus, I was transferred to RR. At the personal level, the transfer helped ease things for me since the classes were in the early mornings and did not interfere with the reporting assignments at TRN. This went on till an interruption occurred when Gorkhapatra Sansthan deputed me as its New Delhi correspondent in 1989.
On return from the New Delhi posting in 1990, this scribe did not approach the university to take him back to teaching. Nor did anyone ask him to do for several years until a new head of the Department of Journalism and Mass Communication in RR asked me to rejoin the department on contractual basis. The department head happened to be from one of the earlier batches of journalism students at the same campus. I felt satisfied and also started writing books, authoring and coauthoring more than 15 so far. Out of the 2,300 media articles written so far since 1973, about 100 are estimated to have been on media and media activities, though I have been able to trace and store only 60 of those.
The advantage of having the experience of a working journalist and an academic staff often gives one an edge over many peers who have focused on only one area of their professional career. My 23 years as a practicing journalist, including 10 as an academic concurrently, followed by another spell of uninterrupted innings in teaching since the spring of 1997 when full-time journalism was given a goodbye, has been a blessing for acquiring hands-on experience to supplement academic work.
It continues to be a rewarding experience—and with no regrets.
Without comment
Prime Minister Madhav Kumar Nepal, quoted in Gorkhapatra: The education sector should not be treated with cavalier attitude or made a political playground.
