Why good teaching still goes unnoticed

Indian universities reward credentials and publications more consistently than meaningful, effective, and student-focused teaching excellence

Henry Adams’s words, “A teacher affects eternity; he can never tell where his influence stops,” encourage us to consider whether influence usually ends at the classroom door or sometimes never begins at all. A typical institution in India has a photograph of a faculty member holding a certificate. Behind them, a banner displays a Faculty Development Programme. Everyone in the photo is smiling. The photograph has been uploaded to the institution’s website, and a checkbox is checked somewhere.

This scene is familiar across many universities and affiliated colleges. Too often, however, the programme ends with attendance records and photographs, while classroom practices remain largely unchanged.

We have developed a strong capacity for faculty development programmes, but have not maintained focus on their main purpose. Our system includes faculty development programmes, refresher courses, orientation sessions, and training logs required by NAAC, NEP, and other ranking bodies. Yet what we lack is a shared understanding of what good teaching actually looks like. The deeper problem is not the absence of training opportunities, but the absence of meaningful attention to teaching itself.

Qualifications versus teaching ability

The essential qualifications include a postgraduate degree in the relevant field and a passing score in the UGC-NET or SET, which is mandatory for appointment as an Assistant Professor. Candidates with a PhD may be exempt from the NET requirement. A PhD is required to become an associate professor or professor. In professional courses such as management or engineering, additional qualifications and industry exposure can improve one’s prospects.

While these credentials may open doors to a teaching career, classroom effectiveness depends on conceptual clarity, the ability to engage students, and a strong connection between theory and practice. Every institution has its own process for selecting faculty members. Some ask for a demo session, while others conduct interviews, and a few institutions regularly assess academic contributions. Yet these processes often fail to evaluate whether a person can truly teach well.

The issue of entering teaching is just as important as developing oneself within it, yet we rarely discuss it. Not everyone enters teaching out of a deep commitment to pedagogy; for some, qualifications become enough to enter the profession. Degrees and eligibility tests do not reveal whether someone can explain a difficult idea to a confused student, notice when a classroom has quietly stopped listening, or remain curious about their subject after twenty years of teaching.

Subject knowledge and teaching ability are not the same. Universities often assume that one automatically guarantees the other.

What good teaching looks like

Many faculty members also work under difficult conditions: large class sizes, administrative overload, pressure to publish, and limited institutional support for pedagogical innovation. Yet universities in places such as Sydney, Manchester, and Iowa City demonstrate how seriously teaching can be treated as a professional skill.

The University of Sydney offers its faculty a Graduate Certificate in Educational Studies at no cost, peer review of teaching as a continuous process, and a professional learning framework grounded in the idea that good teaching develops over a career, not just in a weekend. The University of Manchester offers a Postgraduate Certificate in Higher Education, mentoring programmes, and a Teaching Excellence team dedicated to improving classroom practice.

At Colorado State and the University of Iowa, teaching is evaluated through self-reflection, peer observation, and student feedback because institutions believe it deserves that level of attention. Some Indian institutions have also
begun creating teaching-learning centres and structured faculty mentoring systems, though such efforts remain uneven across the sector.

In many Indian universities, appraisal forms still focus heavily on how many papers were published and how many workshops were attended. Far less attention is given to whether students understood concepts more clearly, became more engaged, or developed stronger analytical skills.

In most Indian universities, there are still faculty members who are truly exceptional. Someone who has been teaching the same subject for fifteen years and still keeps up with every major publication in the field. A young lecturer at a small private college in a tier-two city who redesigns her course repeatedly because she keeps finding better ways to explain concepts, without anyone asking her to.

A professor who still makes students think even years after graduation. Such people show what the wider system could produce if good teaching were consistently recognised and supported. Instead, many remain unrecognised and eventually lose the motivation to keep improving.

What universities choose to reward

This is not entirely the teacher’s fault. An underpaid profession, overwhelmed by administrative work and excessive workloads, and evaluated mostly on metrics that do not reflect classroom realities, will inevitably produce graduates who are less prepared for professional and civic life.

Research matters deeply to universities. The problem arises when publication metrics overshadow classroom engagement in faculty evaluation systems. There is a clear reward for submitting a paper to a Scopus-indexed journal before the appraisal deadline. There is far less reward for spending a summer rethinking how to teach more effectively. We built this system, and we should not be surprised by what it produces.

Teaching remains one of the professions with the greatest social responsibility. It demands preparation, focus, and the willingness to see whether the student in the third row truly understood the lesson. In many institutions, these practices are becoming harder to sustain. Accountability for teaching quality remains weak, and meaningful classroom evaluation is still rare.

We must acknowledge teachers who truly make a difference. We need more educators who shape lives and help build the country’s future. Teaching is not just about lecturing from the podium; it involves paying attention to what students genuinely learn. Better hiring processes, structured mentoring, peer review of teaching, and promotion systems that meaningfully value classroom effectiveness would be a start.

At its core, this is more than an academic issue—it’s a matter of purpose. An institution’s character depends on what its leadership genuinely values. If the goal is to shape lives and serve society, good teaching will naturally be prioritised. However, if the focus remains solely on numbers and revenue, superficial success will continue to overshadow real learning.

(The author is a pro-vice chancellor of a Dehradun-based private university)