Attendance policy for research scholars: Learning can’t be assessed by clock or measured in hours

The clock may help streamline production processes in a Fordist industrial environment, but it will not necessarily improve output in the academic world

Scholarship demands total surrender to the pursuit of knowledge. But such a pursuit can’t be surveyed or quantified in terms of the hours seen to be spent in labs or libraries. The work has to be voluntary and its quality assessed by peers. This is applicable for the full spectrum of scholars — from students to researchers to senior professors. Which is why a recent attendance policy at a department (Electronic Systems Engineering) of the Indian Institute of Science, Bengaluru — which demands MTech and first-year PhD students spend at least 50 hours a week in labs, and senior PhD scholars do 70–80-hour-a-week schedules — makes for a troubling read. With a whole gamut of surveillance paraphernalia necessary to track the hours, the clock-Nazi culture undermines the trust that underlies the student-teacher/supervisor/institution relationship and replaces it with the fear of penal action. The clock may help streamline production processes in a Fordist industrial environment, but it will not necessarily improve output in the academic world.

Student suicides in higher education institutes such as the IITs have been blamed on the absence of a balanced campus life. In fact, many campuses have introduced strict guidelines on work hours to eliminate stress caused by overwork. (HT Archive)

Policies, influenced more by the tendency to discipline and punish, can have serious consequences for the health of students. Such policies fail to grasp the work-leisure dialectic, which is necessary for a healthy and enabling learning environment. Student suicides in higher education institutes such as the IITs have been blamed on the absence of a balanced campus life. In fact, many campuses have introduced strict guidelines on work hours (lab, library, classroom) to eliminate stress caused by overwork. Institutions should know that decent classrooms, hostels, well-resourced 24x7 libraries and labs, and more importantly, the freedom to engage in debate, dialogue, and discussion fearlessly, are more likely to enable knowledge production than disciplinary overreach.