This is quite old, but I started working here in the year since it was posted so here goes.
Students : like at least 90-95% of them really don’t want to learn anything at all. They aren’t the least bit interested in the law ,they’re here to smoke up and hook up for five years and get a degree. It’s quite disappointing for someone who did teach at NLUs and enjoys his students usually. The students are also really entitled and seem to feel like they can ask you to do extra work to make up for their shortcomings. I’ve had students ask me to take extra classes to catch them up on stuff they missed while they vacationed. I’ve had students ask me to schedule exams around their evening plans/ travel plans. I’ve had students ask for copies of my notes that they could take into an open book exam. There’s mass cheating- it’s not clever or anything but honestly it’s not worth the time and effort to pull these students before any university body. They don’t really build any skills and think they’ll coast on jargon and talking about their fathers.
I’ve heard students open brag about how they mistreat younger professors and how they can get away with anything because their dad will make a call.
Students here really don’t like it when you tell them they need to work harder too. And most people don’t - I gave up trying to motivate them in the middle of the term. You just can’t care about it more than they do.
Besides if you show the slightest inclination of not playing ball they will write petitions and try and cost you your job. Has happened to friends of mine. Who needs that headache?
I also know things are worse for female faculty- they’ve been harassed on campus in their classrooms and no one cares enough to help them.
I’ve taught at NLUs too- I know that things are quite bad there and covid leniency has led to a steep decline in acceptable standards- but I think the problem is 50X worse at JGLS.
The admin is fine - they will mostly stay out of your business if you don’t cause problems. It’s a very big university and no one has time to help or harm you. They will try to get you to do admin work - which is fine but most of it is useless. They will try to back you up when students complain and all - but honestly they also don’t have much power. The students are customers and at some point the admin will roll over and do as told. I’ve heard concerning rumours about grades being changed without informing instructors and corruption stuff with the rankings folks. You don’t really get too much control over subjects you’re teaching but they’re trying. It’s hard to steer a big ship like this and folks will often go overboard. Some of the HR type processes they’ve adopted are quite out of place for a university. There’s no faculty senate, there are no faculty meetings really- and there isn’t much free speech either. Your bonuses and salaries depend on feedback scores your students give so that’s messed up. Given all the research that’s out there about how those scores are not reliable metrics.
You don’t really get to institution build the way you would in smaller universities. There’s not much scope for organically growing things- it’s a very corporate atmosphere and you’re employees not faculty really. Besides trying to grow the institution from the ground up is kind of meaningless because the folks at the top have plans already and they’re just gonna try to push that agenda and you get into a lot of silly office politics trying to do these things.
What annoys me though is that each faculty member teaches core courses where there are atleast 60 students in a section and you are usually teaching two sections at a time so at least 100/120 students. That’s too many for one person to keep track of. Too many to meaningfully enforce any university rules about code of conduct or cheating or plagiarism. Too many to even take time and properly evaluate answer scripts rather than just pass everyone. I wonder why we have classes this big given low student teacher ratio but I try to not ask questions. There are other problems with admin stuff/ the political stuff that I try to steer clear of.
The academic environment is not there. It just can’t be because of how the place is structured. They’ve not built a university for faculty and students- they have built basically a hotel for customers and faculty are service people that come in and do their job and leave. There are few faculty offices so you never see your colleagues unless you go out of the way. There are research groups but they seem to be plagued with politics of the silly kind. There is no active mentoring programme for faculty because how will you mentor 200 something faculty? It’s a hard job to keep student faculty ratio at 1:9 and still have hundreds of students join every year. Something has got to give.
The pressure to publish in scopus to boost university rankings makes fools of us all. There is not as much time to do quality research and it is unlikely you will find people to collaborate with as faculty. There’s also a lot of attrition- most everyone I have met has some kind of exit strategy. No one I know is planning to stay long term.
Sonipat is a terrible place to live - the air is poison during winters and the heat during the summers can get quite dangerous. There’s no entertainment at all in the township. You could go to delhi for culture but honestly it’s a lot of time and money wasted in travel. Besides Jindal isn’t even in the heart of sonipat. There is no public transport at all so you’ll need to drive everywhere. And it’s quite unsafe for women from what I hear. The working class people are nice and humble and honest and helpful. The elite folks are all quite messed up. The locals will assume you’re extremely rich because you work at the university and will try and take advantage of that. The university is quite divorced from its surroundings. They don’t do much to be involved community members, do good to the surrounding areas , or to hire locally for medium- higher level positions- this does create resentment and conflict with locals. Creates an unsafe environment if not an unethical one.
The pay- honestly end of day money in account is not that far of Government pay scales - 10-20 k here there won’t change your life drastically. The housing they give is better than what NLUs do. But folks will still whine about it. I wish they encouraged folks to bike to work and create bike safe paths. rather than rely on these shuttles that come every hour or so- it’d be better for the earth.
A lot of these problems are not fixable for the model the university is running on tbh. You need lots of money - you want extremely wealthy customers who won’t think about money they’re spending- they won’t be the most motivated learner’s. Because folks are paying so much they do think they’re entitled to a lot and they’re buying a degree and teachers are around to be at their beck and call. It’s disrespectful as hell but how do you change that mindset? Especially when admissions teams promise them so much? How are you gonna tell your customers they are wrong or entitled or give them failing grades for failing work?
You need to hire faculty to keep pace with the growing number of students - you’re gonna hire like crazy- literally my interview with them was for 2 minutes. And not have a check on quality or really any systems to create anything for faculty. No real research collaboration, no real collegiality. People are nice - but only in the way you’re nice to strangers you meet at a buffet.
Would you rather spend the money you have building hostel rooms for more students who bring in money or faculty offices and libraries and communal spaces?
It’s too big a ship to meaningfully mentor younger colleagues or build some sort of community for faculty. It’s too big a ship to even check and ask if there are problems that need fixing. You can’t have a faculty senate when that faculty is numbering in the hundreds. You can’t have democratic decision making at all. You get orders from above is all. That means you can’t expect people to invest in institution building other than doing the bare minimum. Almost everyone is here for a good time not a long time.
There are exceptions to all of this. Students who are a joy, admin folks who are very competent and inspiring even, extremely ethical colleagues, faculty whom it’s a joy to know, locals who are warm and hospitable. But honestly you have to have a lot of patience and a lot of optimism to see it. And you have to have the ability to unsee and unhear stuff that’s not great.
Students : like at least 90-95% of them really don’t want to learn anything at all. They aren’t the least bit interested in the law ,they’re here to smoke up and hook up for five years and get a degree. It’s quite disappointing for someone who did teach at NLUs and enjoys his students usually. The students are also really entitled and seem to feel like they can ask you to do extra work to make up for their shortcomings. I’ve had students ask me to take extra classes to catch them up on stuff they missed while they vacationed. I’ve had students ask me to schedule exams around their evening plans/ travel plans. I’ve had students ask for copies of my notes that they could take into an open book exam. There’s mass cheating- it’s not clever or anything but honestly it’s not worth the time and effort to pull these students before any university body. They don’t really build any skills and think they’ll coast on jargon and talking about their fathers.
I’ve heard students open brag about how they mistreat younger professors and how they can get away with anything because their dad will make a call.
Students here really don’t like it when you tell them they need to work harder too. And most people don’t - I gave up trying to motivate them in the middle of the term. You just can’t care about it more than they do.
Besides if you show the slightest inclination of not playing ball they will write petitions and try and cost you your job. Has happened to friends of mine. Who needs that headache?
I also know things are worse for female faculty- they’ve been harassed on campus in their classrooms and no one cares enough to help them.
I’ve taught at NLUs too- I know that things are quite bad there and covid leniency has led to a steep decline in acceptable standards- but I think the problem is 50X worse at JGLS.
The admin is fine - they will mostly stay out of your business if you don’t cause problems. It’s a very big university and no one has time to help or harm you. They will try to get you to do admin work - which is fine but most of it is useless. They will try to back you up when students complain and all - but honestly they also don’t have much power. The students are customers and at some point the admin will roll over and do as told. I’ve heard concerning rumours about grades being changed without informing instructors and corruption stuff with the rankings folks. You don’t really get too much control over subjects you’re teaching but they’re trying. It’s hard to steer a big ship like this and folks will often go overboard. Some of the HR type processes they’ve adopted are quite out of place for a university. There’s no faculty senate, there are no faculty meetings really- and there isn’t much free speech either. Your bonuses and salaries depend on feedback scores your students give so that’s messed up. Given all the research that’s out there about how those scores are not reliable metrics.
You don’t really get to institution build the way you would in smaller universities. There’s not much scope for organically growing things- it’s a very corporate atmosphere and you’re employees not faculty really. Besides trying to grow the institution from the ground up is kind of meaningless because the folks at the top have plans already and they’re just gonna try to push that agenda and you get into a lot of silly office politics trying to do these things.
What annoys me though is that each faculty member teaches core courses where there are atleast 60 students in a section and you are usually teaching two sections at a time so at least 100/120 students. That’s too many for one person to keep track of. Too many to meaningfully enforce any university rules about code of conduct or cheating or plagiarism. Too many to even take time and properly evaluate answer scripts rather than just pass everyone. I wonder why we have classes this big given low student teacher ratio but I try to not ask questions. There are other problems with admin stuff/ the political stuff that I try to steer clear of.
The academic environment is not there. It just can’t be because of how the place is structured. They’ve not built a university for faculty and students- they have built basically a hotel for customers and faculty are service people that come in and do their job and leave. There are few faculty offices so you never see your colleagues unless you go out of the way. There are research groups but they seem to be plagued with politics of the silly kind. There is no active mentoring programme for faculty because how will you mentor 200 something faculty? It’s a hard job to keep student faculty ratio at 1:9 and still have hundreds of students join every year. Something has got to give.
The pressure to publish in scopus to boost university rankings makes fools of us all. There is not as much time to do quality research and it is unlikely you will find people to collaborate with as faculty. There’s also a lot of attrition- most everyone I have met has some kind of exit strategy. No one I know is planning to stay long term.
Sonipat is a terrible place to live - the air is poison during winters and the heat during the summers can get quite dangerous. There’s no entertainment at all in the township. You could go to delhi for culture but honestly it’s a lot of time and money wasted in travel. Besides Jindal isn’t even in the heart of sonipat. There is no public transport at all so you’ll need to drive everywhere. And it’s quite unsafe for women from what I hear. The working class people are nice and humble and honest and helpful. The elite folks are all quite messed up. The locals will assume you’re extremely rich because you work at the university and will try and take advantage of that. The university is quite divorced from its surroundings. They don’t do much to be involved community members, do good to the surrounding areas , or to hire locally for medium- higher level positions- this does create resentment and conflict with locals. Creates an unsafe environment if not an unethical one.
The pay- honestly end of day money in account is not that far of Government pay scales - 10-20 k here there won’t change your life drastically. The housing they give is better than what NLUs do. But folks will still whine about it. I wish they encouraged folks to bike to work and create bike safe paths. rather than rely on these shuttles that come every hour or so- it’d be better for the earth.
A lot of these problems are not fixable for the model the university is running on tbh. You need lots of money - you want extremely wealthy customers who won’t think about money they’re spending- they won’t be the most motivated learner’s. Because folks are paying so much they do think they’re entitled to a lot and they’re buying a degree and teachers are around to be at their beck and call. It’s disrespectful as hell but how do you change that mindset? Especially when admissions teams promise them so much? How are you gonna tell your customers they are wrong or entitled or give them failing grades for failing work?
You need to hire faculty to keep pace with the growing number of students - you’re gonna hire like crazy- literally my interview with them was for 2 minutes. And not have a check on quality or really any systems to create anything for faculty. No real research collaboration, no real collegiality. People are nice - but only in the way you’re nice to strangers you meet at a buffet.
Would you rather spend the money you have building hostel rooms for more students who bring in money or faculty offices and libraries and communal spaces?
It’s too big a ship to meaningfully mentor younger colleagues or build some sort of community for faculty. It’s too big a ship to even check and ask if there are problems that need fixing. You can’t have a faculty senate when that faculty is numbering in the hundreds. You can’t have democratic decision making at all. You get orders from above is all. That means you can’t expect people to invest in institution building other than doing the bare minimum. Almost everyone is here for a good time not a long time.
There are exceptions to all of this. Students who are a joy, admin folks who are very competent and inspiring even, extremely ethical colleagues, faculty whom it’s a joy to know, locals who are warm and hospitable. But honestly you have to have a lot of patience and a lot of optimism to see it. And you have to have the ability to unsee and unhear stuff that’s not great.