The teaching standards at the University of Karachi (KU), one of Sindh’s esteemed public universities, was exposed on Wednesday when the PhD-qualified visiting faculty of the Department of Education failed to impress the interviewers of the selection board seeking to appoint them as regular faculty members, sources informed Pakistan Today.
A few days ago, the members of the selection board had sought to appoint the visiting faculty as regular faculty members in the Department of English, but the board members were forced to meet with similar disappointment. The KU has been facing a dearth of teachers and the management has been seeking to increase the members of the regular faculty in some of the university’s departments; however, the selection board’s results paint a very grim picture of the university’s teaching standard.
In 2008, the university had published advertisements and invited interested candidates to take a test and appear in an interview to overcome the shortage of teachers in various departments; and KU had received hundreds of applications from candidates interested in teaching at the English and Education departments. When the visiting faculty appeared in the test for appointment as regular faculty members, some of them failed, whereas others were ineffective in making an impression on the interviewers.
Three of the visiting faculty members who had passed the test for appointment in the Department of English failed to clear the final interview; unfortunately, the visiting faculty has been teaching in the same department for the past five years. Similarly, KU formed a selection board for appointment in the Department of Education on Wednesday, and the visiting teachers with five years of teaching experience in the same department failed to meet the criteria.
The university had received applications from 109 candidates, including the current visiting faculty; and only five among them, including four visiting faculty members, had qualified for the final interview. Interestingly, an inexperienced candidate had cleared the test, whereas the ‘experienced candidates’ failed. Faculty of Arts Dean Zafar Iqbal told Pakistan Today that the selection board had exposed the ineptitude of the visiting faculty that is currently imparting education to a large number of undergraduates.
He said that the university management is seriously considering replacing the visiting faculty members who have failed the test and interview. “I have requested the vice chancellor to forbid the failed visiting faulty members from teaching in the next semester. I have also suggested providing training to the selected teachers for up to six months and the proposal has received consensus,” he added.
Iqbal also said that the selected teachers would be trained by senior teachers and would be educated about teaching students and conducting semester examinations.
