How Evaluation Systems Quietly Steer Academic Trajectories

Abstract

Scholarly research is by and large an outcome of funding received by individual or collaborative efforts. The criteria of major funding agencies in a region place constraints on not only contemporary research choices but also on intellectual development over longer career trajectories. Many funders have their focus areas predetermined to address topical challenges of societal relevance, and these areas receive higher priority. Consequently, research by a larger number of scholars falls outside priority areas, that research is often beyond the spotlight and appears to move at a slow pace. The political parties in power and their support agencies taste success only when high-profile issues are attended to, albeit in the form of big-bang solutions. Since there is always a plethora of problems in the country, funding priority areas tend to be repetitive over different funding calls. The normative aspect of funding agencies in a country-and its intensity act as a guiding compass to steer the direction of research, irrespective of an individual’s intellectual aspiration.

The lists drawn up by API and CARE committees place undue importance on the quantity of research publications, irrespective of the funding and nature of research. Even simple research studies that require no more than a year of work and intellectual thought are found to be published in bulk. Quality is compromised for quantity. Care is taken to ensure that these publications appear in journals that find a place in the API/CARE lists. The nature of promotion and appointee selection norms need not be explained, as these are the common expectations for attaining recognizable success in an academic career. The pattern of workload distribution also has a significant role to play in influencing research direction. An unequal share of class and administrative work prevents these individuals from investing quality time in research. Given the importance of these issues, an experiential audit was conducted to ascertain whether or to what extent funding norms, the API/CARE list, promotion criteria, and workload distribution influence research choices.