By Zohaib Ahmad,
University of Azad Jammu Kashmir is the only university in liberated territory, which offers post graduate degrees in a number of fields. With branches scattered almost in every district headquarter the varsity has two campuses in the suburbs of capital city (Muzaffarabad) and many others in territory of AJK. Large number of students from inside or outside the state are studying and getting exposure to many learning activities. It was established in 1980 and about fifteen to sixteen thousand students are enrolled and mentored by the academic staff of about 800 to 900 people. The administrative staff is about six to seven hundred people. It is currently ranked at No.16 in HEC ranking of general category universities in Pakistan.
Teachers are obviously the role models for every student and there is no doubt that Teachers shape the personality of students in a planned way. Fortunately, Azad Jammu Kashmir is blessed with highly qualified and dignified academic staff.
There are Two terms “The Administrator” and “The Teacher”. Many people relate these terms by saying, Teachers are good Administrator. I will discuss in the forth coming discussion that there is no relationship between the context of these two terms.
A teacher is a person who help students to acquire knowledge, competence or virtue(Wikipedia).Whereas an Administrator is a person whose job involves helping to organize and supervise the way that an organization or institution function(Collin’s definition).
A teacher can be an administrator in the prevailing system of education bearing complete administrative authorities. The students who are seeing the administrative effects in class are not actually the administrative skills of their teachers but that is just the Teaching skill. As I mentioned before that in the prevailing system of education teachers are given some actual administrative posts in different institutions and on that positions they have to decide sometimes. Generally Teacher as an administrator is not a fruitful indicator for the society or organization. The only problem that teacher faces at administration is the power of taking decisions. Their decisions do not prove as sensible or in some cases relevant. Society blames their performances with a great intensity of dissatisfaction. They even spoil their career with a lot of logical criticism. Sometimes they do not face any criticism because they are wasting the time of organization by doing nothing. When they decide to do something, they struggle and at the end become fail. In this way they also lost the reputation as a Teacher as well.
Teachers should not take the responsibility of administration because administering the things outside the classroom is proven complicated for them in many departments of the state.
I will explain this with the help of examples taken from University of Azad Jammu and Kashmir under the scenario of COVID 19.
Role of the administration is very important for the development and fame of any institution. Administration should have the capacity to approximate the forth coming problems.
In the crisis of novel pandemic , role of the Administration of University of Azad Jammu and Kashmir is not satisfactory. The reason is may be that I mentioned before that Teachers are administering the main positions of authority. And as per my discern, when teachers start running something they face problems and cannot deter many issues. It is clear that only teachers can make administrators but teacher as an administrator is not a suitable character in the society because he cannot satisfy the benefits of people in large.
The reason that I’m bound to write about UAJK is that in the current situation the administration of UAJK is wasting the time of students by just arranging meetings and notifying different departments some unclear things and till to date they did not make even a single bold decision about the future academic plans. On the contrary, other universities that are in AJK or outside AJK have made decisions and now they are on the stage of implementation.
There are two major problems that they are facing yet. The first one is whether to promote students to next semester or not and the second one is the commencement of the next semester.
It is the pandemic situation and no one is clear about its end. Everything related to business and economy ,Medical, Science and technology and Education is in trouble. No one can propitiate the damages. But also in these situation only the administration can extenuate the damages. Unfortunately the administration of UAJK is not doing well.
The first problem can be solved by promoting the students to the next semester as soon as possible. Because out of many universities UAJK had ended the previous semester in term of lectures and some campuses were at the stage of after Mid terms. So it is easy approach to promote the students to the next semester without any loss inn terms of lectures. For the matter of examination they can compensate the students.
The second problem is that when and how to start the next semester. Unfortunately the Administration is unable to use Computer Sciences department at this stage to design an optimus website for online classes. They are still at “Agar magar” situation and wasting the time of students. They know that government has imposed ban on transportation till 19th June and University cannot start proper classes. they are busy in meetings and unable to decide what exactly they will do. Many other universities has started online classes and the students of UAJK are still waiting for decision from the administration.
They have wasted one month till to date but from now onwards administration can save another month of students by promoting the them by starting online classes from May 1 also they can use their academic staff for the preparation of Result based on mid terms. They did not even prepare any type of result or highly equipped website.
According to me when the classes will be properly started , they will not be able to take exams and at the end they will have to prepare the result on mid term or assignment basis. At that circumstances , they will be successful in wasting two months with loss of previous semester and also next semester.
In a nutshell, Teacher cannot work as administrator. The role of teacher should be the source of development of student’s perception, personality and determination. If the teacher works as administrator then institution will not be developed as it should be. In the prevailing system of education institute uses teacher at administrative posts that is may be the failure of some institutes.
We can see institutes going down having highly qualified teacher on administrative posts. Highly qualified person other than teacher should be the part of administration. It is not the mistake of teachers but the system is using them in a wrong way. So when any institute wants to become iconic and prominent, that should have to take people other than teachers at administrative setup