| |
5. Measures to attract and retain talented faculty
To attract and retain talented faculty, we recommend better
incentives, including improving remuneration and service conditions. It may be
necessary to think of salary differentials within and between universities and
law schools along with other means of attracting and retaining talented
faculty members. Such salary differentials between and within universities and
law schools could be effective without being large. This will help retain
talent in legal academia where the problem of inadequate remuneration is far
more acute than in other disciplines. Salary differentials could be considered
as a means to retain quality talent and also promote a culture of excellence.
To foster quality and create better incentives, there is also
need to remove fetters on faculty that pertain to opportunities in legal
practice (such as consultancy assignments and legal practice in courts). These
reforms need to be introduced in a balanced, reasonable and regulated manner
to ensure adequate incentivization for faculty without compromising on the
maintenance of consistent academic quality. As a further incentive, it is
necessary to create better opportunities for active involvement of academia in
the shaping of national legal education policy.
There is also need to reconsider existing promotional schemes
and avenues to promote meritorious faculty members. Other incentives for
faculty include fully paid sabbaticals; adequate House Rent Allowance (HRA);
instituting awards to honor reputed teachers and researchers at national and
institutional levels; flexibility to appoint law teachers without having an
LL.M degree if the individual has proven academic or professional credentials;
faculty exchange programs with leading universities abroad and upgrading
existing infrastructure.
6. Developing a Research Tradition in law schools and
universities
We believe that creating a tradition of research in law
schools and universities is imperative if India has to transform itself from
being only a consumer of available legal knowledge to being a leading producer
in the world of new legal knowledge and ideas. We recommend the following
measures to develop such a serious culture of research: emphasizing analytical
writing skills and research methodology as integral aspects of the LL.B
program; creating excellent infrastructure (including research friendly
library facilities, availability of computers and internet; digitization of
case law; access to latest journals and legal databases available worldwide);
rationalizing the teaching load to leave faculty members sufficient time for
research; granting sabbatical leave to faculty to undertake research; creating
incentives if research results in peer reviewed publications, either through
additional increments (beyond the UGC scheme) or in any other appropriate
manner; institutionalizing periodic faculty seminars; establishing quality
peer-reviewed journals; prescribing research output as one of the criteria for
promotion; creating a database of citations to identify the most cited and
influential writings as well as considering such data for promotion purposes;
establishing prerequisites such as a mandatory dissertation in the LL.M
program, a pre-registration presentation and a course in methodology for
M.Phil and PhD programs respectively; and establishing four new centers for
advanced legal research.
|
