Sudhir K is behaving like an aggressive corporate tycoon who wants to recruit the best people and crush all competition. He is poaching good NLU alumni from other places. Earlier he only hired NLSIU alumni, now he is hiring NALSAR and NLUO alumni. How can NLUs compete with Sudhir? Would like to know your suggestions. Here are mine:

1. More visiting profs
2. A partnership among non-NLSIU NLUs where faculty can be shared.
3. Swallow our pride and propose a partnership with JGLS where JGLS can lend their best faculty.
4. Reverse-poaching from NLSIU by offering their faculty promotions (in fact, I am told that is how MP Singh for Sudhir to NUJS).
5. Next VC to be an NLU alum like Sudhir

NOTE: This thread is open only to non-NLSIU people and all trolls will be reported. That's why I am opening it as a separate thread and not in the NLSIU news report. Some nasty personal comments were posted there.

This seems like a troll question but I’ll pay the tax and give you a straight answer.

Sudhir K is not a corporate tycoon poaching players from other teams. He’s a VC of a public university with limited funds at his disposal. The people he has hired could easily earn two/three times as much if they wanted to- many of them are taking a pay cut going to teach at nls. This also isn’t really about the nls brand- this didn’t happen before Sudhir. So what exactly is Sudhir offering these guys?

I think it comes down to what academics want from their workplace.
1) like all folks in public service, they want to do a job they can be proud of. This means they want freedom within the classroom, to teach as they see fit. This means both the freedom from political censorship, and the freedom to set and enforce rigorous standards. This means that the administration has to inspire confidence that they will back up faculty and not pander to students who want easy grades. They also don’t want to deal with students who seek to bully them. So this means they want to be certain that the student culture is one where students are eager to learn and put in the work.
Sudhir K has a reputation for maintaining high standards in his academic endeavours, this inspires some confidence that being part of the nls experiment maybe worth while.
None of the other VCs really have the same reputation. How many other NLUs have an academic review committee that works to make sure that courses delivered are of the highest quality? And there are so many troubling stories one hears from other NLUs of students running competent faculty out of town because they wanted easy grades.

Students are vulnerable and mental health is a problem - but that doesn’t mean we throw standards out of the window- it means we bolster mental health services so that students can deal with their issues instead of wanting the world to adjust to them.

2) the second thing academics want is to find a home. This means a collegial atmosphere among the faculty, this means feeling like you are a part of something together. And this means you feel valued in the institution. This can be small things like giving faculty decent housing, having weekly faculty meetings/ seminars, encouraging faculty and students to see each other as teammates rather than competitions. And it can also mean big things - the ability to tell the administration when you think something is wrong, being given responsibility and voice within the university. The ability to advocate for our students. Other NLUs simply don’t follow these best practices. And it’s easy for someone to feel alienated when they join as faculty.

3) the third thing academics want is the ability to do their research and advance their career. This means confidence that the administration will encourage and support their research efforts. If someone needs reduced work load so they can interview prisoners across the country- they should be able to get it. If someone applies for a research grant and gets it- they should have confidence that the administration and fellow colleagues will be encouraging.
This also means that you want to work where other good academics work- so that you can collaborate with them. And for younger faculty- this means that senior faculty and VCs are nurturing and want the younger guys to succeed. Sudhir K pushes his younger colleagues to publish, he talks to them about their research projects and tries to help them, when you send him a paper he reads it and gives you comments. He has nurtured and taught so many young people who are now academics in their own right- and there hasn’t been one whiff of allegations of plagiarism or exploitation. Other VCs don’t have this reputation.

Even just looking at how many alumni have returned to nls- it’s interesting to note that nearly all of them have worked with Sudhir or around Sudhir in some capacity or the other. You can dismiss this as nepotism, but you can also recognise that research and institution building is a collaborative excercise. And that Sudhir has nurtured and supported many academics through out his short career. How many other VCs can boast of having a similarly qualified group of people who are willing to follow them? Most of these other Vcs- if they see a bright student or a younger colleague- they try to exploit them, to plagiarise, to bully and generally limit the younger colleagues career so they don’t leave. Sudhir doesn’t do that.

Academics are simple people with simple wants. You give them that- they’ll come flocking to you.

Here is why none of your options will work.
1) visiting professors cannot make up for the poor quality of education you get in your core courses. They also have little investment in the university compared to regular hires.
2) this partnership will never work. Faculty aren’t a resource like money that you can share- they’re people. If someone wants to stay in Bhopal and work there - how are you gonna force them to go work in Gandhinagar? Why would they put up with that?
3) again people who want to work at jgls cannot be forced to go work elsewhere. They are people not things.
4) more money won’t solve the problem- these guys have all already taken pay cuts to work with Sudhir. Why will they be poachable?
5) an NLU alum alone is not enough- this is a culture that needs to change. From senior faculty to students to the library staff - everyone.

If you want your university to be better - you should start by being a better student and by demanding better education.

Kian, this is one of the best comments I have ever seen on this site. Deserves to be its own opinion piece. Could you build on this, and interview academics with good credentials, solid research and a good classroom reputation on what they value. Or a general piece on faculty in public universities and the challenges they face?