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NLSIU students submit report card grading their profs: Majority of ad-hocs below par reviews, one outstanding

NLS students turn tables, rate their faculty.
NLS students turn tables, rate their faculty.

At NLSIU Bangalore, only 6 out of 15 ad-hoc professors scored more than 60% in a student evaluation commissioned by the NLSIU Student Bar Association (SBA).

It is understood that the report 52-page report, which has several pages of commentary and feedback on each of 15 professors, has been submitted to the vice chancellor.

The SBA declined to comment when we contacted them.

In the introduction to the “Ad Hoc Faculty Report” prepared by the SBA, it has stated: “To ensure that student feedback is taken into account in the recruitment process, the office bearers of the Student Bar Association have commissioned this Report wherein the opinion of the student body on each of the ad-hoc professors presently teaching at the University is presented.”

Nine NLSIU fourth-year and fifth-year students part of the SBA had prepared a Google form to circulate among at least 60% of the students taught by each of the professors being evaluated.

The form allowed respondents to rate from 1 to 5 the following fields for each professor: course goals, course material, teaching, projects, course instructor and course output. The committee then collated all numeric responses and calculated a mean score and a median score for each professor.

The overall score for each professor was the mean of all the means and of all the medians.

One professor scored 4.4 out of 5 and five professors scored above 3 but below 4. Four other professors scored above 50%.

The lowest score was 1.7 out of 5 (pictured above).

The forms also gave space to the respondents to fill in comments on each professor. Some of the comments received were:

The only abiding memory I have from the few classes she taught us was that [...] (incorrectly) taught us how to activate ‘Do Not Disturb’ on our mobile phones. She chose to teach us DND over 4 hours instead of covering essential material.

didn’t like me because I am a foreign student and [...] believed that I don't deserve to be here. Two other foreign students also felt the same way. One day during attendance, [...] refused to mark me present after I had missed my roll call, though I was in class. However, when another class mate missed [...] roll call, [...] gave her attendance without any hesitation.

While the course was supposed to be on [...], most of [...] project topics dealt with [...], an area explicitly excluded in the course outline. Further, these topics were never touched upon in class, and aside from being irrelevant to the course, were also insufficient to teach the student any useful information regarding the subject in general. But most importantly, the viva was conducted inside the office of the instructor, with no witnesses present.

The NLSIU SBA managed to convince the administration in April to renew its faculty recruitment drive, as a result of which the law school advertised for faculty positions after an hiatus of 8 years.

Sample report

Full sample questions for the highest-ranked professor
Full sample questions for the highest-ranked professor

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