Why academicians become rabid revolvers?
From Oxford to Osmania, from Harvard to Himachal, Jamaica to JNU or Columbia to Calcutta the problem of academicians getting into business that is not their business is palpable and visible to everyone.
NewsBharati 05-Jun-2025 14:51:17 PM
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“The reason that university politics is so vicious is because stakes are so small”
― Henry Kissinger
A worldwide problem
From Oxford to Osmania, from Harvard to Himachal, Jamaica to JNU or Columbia to Calcutta the problem of academicians getting into business that is not their business is palpable and visible to everyone. Universities and colleges are created to teach and educate the youth so that they can contribute to the society and add value to the nation where they belong. More importantly they should become professionals and get some worthwhile employment to earn a living for self and family.
One thing is starkly evident that most professional colleges- teaching professional skills along with education to students- like engineering, management and even medicine have lesser number of protests by students or which are fully supported or even incited by the teachers. I have observed this in my two decade teaching and learning career. You will find that there were hardly any strikes or ‘dharnas’ in IITs.
One reason is that students are very focussed to learn and then earn. They have very little time to get into infructuous activities. There is for example much more rigour and academic load in MBBS, BBA or engineering (B-Tech) than in BA, or MA or B. Com/ M. Com.
Empty mind is a devil’s workshop can be applied in this case to the tee. There is so much rigour and load in Professional courses that students get no time to think of any other activity good or bad. The academic pressure is very high and students cannot afford to miss a class leave alone bunking a whole week. Therefore, if you get a large number of young students to be incited by anyone- who have enough time on their hands- becomes a dangerous concoction.
There is lot of debate on the undebatable topic that is definition of education itself
John Dewey's definition of education is 'as the process of the reconstruction of experience, giving it a more socialized value through the medium of increased individual efficiency’ O hello!
John Dewey was an American philosopher, psychologist, and educational reformer.
Educationists want to make it so complex that even a well-educated person cannot understand what is education.
An unemployed force to reckon with
‘The nose of a mob is its imagination. By this, at any time, it can be quietly led.’
Edgar Allan Poe
Professors have direct access to their students and since they are generally elderly, students in a way respect their opinions. Professors because of their profession can articulate well which is a bonus as an influencer. Once you get a few fish on your side, others think it to be fashionable to join the protest band wagon. They get a good reason to bunk the class and also feel so called ‘liberated’. If propped up by a professor or a faculty, they feel empowered and emboldened. In a way they get a stamp of approval- though a false feeling. ‘Arey professor Ghosh sir is with us, nothing to worry, let us bash on regardless.’ Is a common feeling amongst the students. Some students do it for the heck of it- in fact most.
Professors also have enough time on hand to get into such activity. There is hardly any accountability in academic field. I remember interviewing one of my students in MBA program- I used to do this after first semester to understand what change the course has made to each student. It used to be open feedback too. One girl from a prestigious university in India when asked what was her biggest take away from the college said ‘Sir in our bachelor’s degree course, we used to protest mostly for the heck of it! Now I realise that one must respect hierarchy and spend time in learning than wasting time in silly activities.’ Bang on. I felt very happy that we were doing our job correctly as the main job of a college and a teacher is to influence the attitude of the pupils and make them more responsible and matured citizens otherwise what is the point of getting degrees and create nuisance in the society. Yes, subject matter is important and must be taken care of.
Let me give some reasons for the academic jingoism if I can call it that.
Sitting on an ivory tower
Most, almost all teachers think that they are the greatest. In today’s environment it can be exemplified with ‘Trumpism’ or ‘Trumpetism’. The POTUS syndrome. Backed with degrees and published papers they think that they can think better than any thinker who thinks he can think! They literally sit on an ivory tower and look down upon in a way on others. They treat the world as their class room and public at large as their students who better learn what they teach. I am not in any way talking ill about their skills and domain knowledge of good teachers and there are plenty - they are very good, but a teacher must stick to his core competence and the job he is paid for. A surgeon cannot go and open a car’s bonnet and start repairing it or at best advise the car owner what to do with a car which has broken down on the road. In fact, an academician will never open the bonnet and dirty his hands but he will give a powerful lecture on how to maintain the car!
Former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, 70 years as a diplomat, adviser to presidents, and public figure, was a history teacher at Harvard. He said that as a teacher he could punch holes in every government policy or decision but when he got into the state department, he realized that it was not easy to take decisions as one had to think of the consequences too.
One of the reasons for this differentiated thinking is probably because of their insulation from the real world, leading to the famed ivory tower elitist mentality. It’s easy when you are an academic to come up with all kinds of wonderful political theories about how to achieve Utopia, and the quest for Utopia is inherently a left-wing goal. Sometime it can be seen as academic (misconstrued as intellect) arrogance.
For example, lot of ‘budhee jivis’ come on TV and say ‘government must focus on creating jobs’. None of them has ever suggested a way to create more jobs.
It may not be wrong to say ‘education is too important to be left to pure academicians.’ With no malice to academic fraternity at all.
Self-gratification
There are some vulgar expressions to express this expression, but be that as it may, the basic tenet is that pure academicians are far removed from reality and I have experienced it firsthand. They may be very knowledgeable but they are very theoretical in their thinking and approach. They have a captive audience and people have to be there to listen to what they say- they do say nice things and are definitely knowledgeable in their own field.
Lack of realism and being conceited
Most university lecturers have never had a real job. A lot of them would not survive in the private sector even for a month. In the private sector and industry people want results and not theories. A University lecturer does not understand these things. He thinks he does. He thinks that his ivory tower is the real world. Bad news: it isn't. I have experienced this in my decades of experience in the actual situations, teaching or otherwise.
In leftist ‘ideals’ the academic is at the top of the hierarchy and usually the wealthiest in society especially in socialism.
Nothing angers academic types more than, seeing themselves being surpassed by an “intellectual inferior” or an uneducated person.
Another aspect is that they emphasise too much on research. Research of course is very important and paramount for generating knowledge. But how much of pure research is really being done is not very clear. And one cannot measure everything from the prism of research alone. Education must make people job worthy and job ready. Pure academicians do not look at employability as a parameter of excellence for academic institutions. Publishing papers in journals may not be the end all and be all of research. Many times, it is you scratch my back and I scratch yours. Sometimes a ‘copy paste’ job may take years to get detected.
"He was so learned that he could name a horse in nine languages; so ignorant that he bought a cow to ride on." Is an apt expression for such a situation.
The left-wing skew
Right wingers dominate professions where competitive results, facts, hard realities, efficiency are vital; like business, engineers, farmers, military.
Leftists dominate professions based on rhetoric, narratives, fanciful ideas, and jingoism. That is why communism- based on rhetorically pumping up masses failed!
pay the price for their thinking free from physical constraints, hard realities or accountability.
While professors must have expertise in their subject matter, their personal views - especially extreme political or social views - have NO room in the classroom. This isn’t teaching, this is indoctrination, and has no place in an educational institution.
How Left crept in to the centre stage
Left wing graduation students of the 60s and 70s became professors in the 80s and 90s and got an opportunity to teach and propagate their philosophy. They then strangled anybody with differing ideas out of the tenure committees and discussions. They instituted the very speech codes they and those that came before them fought against.
The free speech movement was born at Berkeley which has become the scene of violence against speakers that the students, admin, and professors don't like. This is happening everywhere now. Under the academic freedom a guy can write anything, draw anything, say anything and get away?
Because left-wing ideologies work or almost work in small places confined to a college or university- in a way a gated community; a university then becomes an ivory tower. A small place. Like a kibbutz without working in the fields. You get that frog in the well mentality whereas education is supposed to make you look beyond the horizon and expand your faculties.
What is the way out?
Academicians may think it to be a cultural invasion or encroaching upon their turf- a turf of freedom, comfort and academic autonomy. But again, my experience tells me that hiring faculty from the industry in a good proportion is a good idea. Seniors in industry are very well educated in their area of operation and also have loads of domain experience. If one has a flair for teaching, a person from industry is a very good resource in education. Along with this he brings professionalism too. Of late it has become a trend in India which pure academicians want to call ‘Industry academic partnership’ so as not to lose their turf.
For example, head of marketing in an FMCG company with an MBA can bring a lot to the table. He can be and will be better equipped than a lecturer who has never seen a market place and pulls and pressures of business but has excellent bookish knowledge. One can hone bookish knowledge but a lecturer cannot get hands on experience of decades sitting on a chair in campus. I have seen people making permanent transition from industry to academics and since they are hardworking, they come up to the theoretical levels very quickly. I have hired General Managers of Banks to teach Finance related subjects and they performed brilliantly.
“The only place success comes before work is in the dictionary.” – Vince Lombardi
Virender Kapoor
A thinker, educationist and an inspirational guru. Kapoor is an Indian who wears many hats. An educationist of repute, he was the Director of a prestigious management Institute under the Symbiosis umbrella. He has emerged as a leading think tank in human behavior, motivation and success. As a celebrity author, his name appears with the likes of Thomas Friedman and Dale Carnegie. He has authored more than 30 books as of now which are on Amazon worldwide and several of his books are in the pipeline.