State to tap expertise of retd academicians

Thiruvananthapuram: Kerala state higher education council is creating a repository of academic scholars and subject experts who are ready to share with students their invaluable knowledge.
Academic brilliance of teachers during their post retirement period seldom gets shared with young students. “Our education system doesn’t allow institutions to keep in their rolls academicians after they cross a certain age. But age is not a barrier in terms of transpiring knowledge. Ours is an attempt to track illuminated minds in academic circles and outside and help young students to have a glimpse of the insightful knowledge the scholars could share with them,” sources in the council said.
In the present context of new regulations by UGC a number of established scholars in academics who retire at the age of 56 or 60 are completely cut off from academic institutions, without even supervising research activities. A great amount of expertise, experiential resource and valuable knowledge remain untapped for the benefit of students, teachers and higher education institutions. If the knowledge of these scholars could be utilized in a fruitful manner by providing them with an ambience to update themselves and to make their knowledge available to higher education institutions, it would positively impact teaching, learning and research in these institutions.
“At present, our focus is on academicians who have to their credit impressive number of publications and are recognised widely for their contributions in the field. But we don’t intend to limit the repository with such scholars or brilliant subject experts outside the education system. There are several other teachers with impressive teaching experience. We would try to tap their potential as well. Once the repository is ready, higher education institutions in the state would be able to avail the service of such experts. This would help establish a rich talent pool, which would otherwise be lost unused,” said the council vice chairman Rajan Gurukkal.
The knowledge of members in the ‘academic volunteer bank’ may be utilised by higher education institutions in the form of interactions, talks, classes, etc. They could even offer specialised courses on demand from other institutions.