A day after Governor K. Sankaranarayanan said that law colleges are facing acute shortage of good teachers, which is affecting the standards of instructions adversely, the Mumbai University’s (MU) law department of supported his statements and said that since efficient teachers were unavailable, posts were lying vacant.
The governor was addressing the law students from across the country at the inauguration of the 3rd National Moot Court Competition organised by Rizvi Law College on Thursday, wherein twenty four teams from various law colleges across the country are participating.
“The teaching profession needs to be made attractive, if required by offering attractive salaries. Colleges should associate eminent practising lawyers, legal professionals and retired judges as honorary faculties to give the students the widest exposure in their subjects. There is a need for making the law syllabus multi-disciplinary, creative and flexible,” Sankaranarayanan said.
Seconding governor’s statements Prof. Narayan Madhukar Rajadhyaksha, Dean, Faculty of Law of MU, said, “There is a shortage of efficient teachers with us. The posts are lying vacant due to several reasons.”
Speaking on the reasons for shortage of faculty, Dr. Suresh Mane, head of the Law department at MU, said, “To be a lecturer in a law college, one needs to hold a Master’s degree and should have cleared the NET or SET exams. Many students fail these exams and so indirectly we don’t have teachers at all.
Another reason is that most of the unaided law college don’t fill up their vacant posts. This problem is not there with aided colleges. Moreover, eminent lawyers come to these law colleges once or twice a year as ‘visiting faculty’. They do not come on regular basis, which also affects the teaching module. We are making some plans to attract more teachers in this profession.”
An eminent lawyer, on the condition of anonymity said, “Even eminent lawyers are busy with high profile cases and have restrictions as they are travelling across the country. This handicaps them to visit law colleges. I am handling over 100 cases across the country and so even I cannot come to colleges even though I am listed as a visiting faculty in one of the colleges.”