1.
Should professors get tenure?
Critics argue that while funds for tenured professors come
from tuition fees, very few tenured professors actually teach.
Teaching has
long been considered a ’noble‘ profession. Teachers shape the future of our
progeny. But the path towards becoming a professor is hard and time consuming.
In the US, they chase the mirage of becoming a ‘tenured’ professor—a process
that lasts up to a decade if one is lucky. ‘Publish or perish’ keeps them doing
research and writing papers that no one may read or use. They have to keep
publishing papers in journals just to keep their foot in the door.
Tenure
grants them freedom. According to Quora, “In IITs, an assistant professor
applicant is expected to have three years of post-doctoral experience (a PhD is
a must). Although an assistant professor is eligible for becoming a
‘tenured’ professor after three years of experience, the common practice for
granting the tenure is after five years.” Besides job security, it lets
professors take sabbaticals. That is what is now at risk. For cash- strapped
colleges, tenure is granted on the basis of the professor’s ability to get
research grants from corporates.
It was meant
to provide a professor the intellectual freedom to pursue research even in
areas without interference from corporate interests and politicians, who might
not like an outspoken professor. Critics argue that while funds for tenured
professors come from tuition fees, very few tenured professors actually teach.
2.
How learning & development help in
scaling-up business
Availability of Talent will not be
easy; therefore organizations will have to focus on the building policy rather
than the buying policy.
Lord
Janus, a Roman God had four eyes to look at both sides. Similarly,
organizations have to be extremely proactive on focusing on current skill
requirement and what are the skills required for future to remain competitive.
Becoming ambidextrous is not easy, as most of us focus on the current
requirement, with little care for what exactly will be required in the future.
After all, it is a complex exercise involving many variables, therefore no one
can predict with certainty about the future.
Learning
is an ongoing process and in today’s challenging business environment it’s an
important need, where either you need to learn a new skill to survive or
upgrade yourself to take up a new role. Investment by the organization in
skilling employees is a win-win proposition. In an SME kind of an environment,
it’s not only important to recruit right talent but also to prepare the talent
to meet the current and future challenges of business.
Indian
mobile handset industry is not very old hence finding the right candidate for
the job becomes challenging and in that case, L&D plays an important role
wherein you hire someone who is close to the required profile and equip him
with skills which are essential for the job.
3.
How to run a successful internship program in your start-up
Why does some companies have great
internship programs while others clearly have a lack in there?
If
I were to tell you that we built Internshala only with interns (we are world's
largest internship platform and in top 500 websites in India), you would
perhaps find it difficult to believe. But Internshala is not the only example.
ConfirmTkt, one of the fastest growing tech start-ups in India with about 5
million users, had only 6 interns & 2 co-founders on their initial team.
The first team of Analytics Vidhya, started in 2013, consisted of 2 interns and
the founder; and these interns played a critical role in making Analytics
Vidhya the number 1 Data Science community in India.
There are enough examples
like these where a team of interns did wonders to a start-ups growth and
success. But then there are also stories of how interns lacked the energy or
maturity and the whole thing was a waste of time for a company. This got us
thinking as to why some companies have great internship programs and why others
don't. We reached out to them to find what it takes to run a successful
internship program at a start-up.
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