Research Orientation in Ayurveda Educational Institutions

There has been a mushroom growth in the number of Ayurveda colleges in the last 2-3 decades which has led to a dilution in the standards of education and research. Pursuing postgraduation has become a fad among the students though they do not get exposure to the basics of research. Recently, CCIM has introduced the Research Methods and Biostatistics subjects in both the graduate and postgraduate levels of Ayurveda curricula. However, the required level of expertise to teach these subjects is not available among the teachers in most of the Ayurveda educational institutions. Therefore, the research is still at a stage of infancy in most of these institutions, though research forms an 'essential' part of the degrees these institutions award. In the following paragraphs, I have tried summarizing the major facets of this problem.

Compulsion-driven Research

Currently, in most of the Ayurveda colleges, research is performed as a ritual for acquiring the degrees. The teachers get involved with research activities out of compulsion to guide the students and not out of curiosity. This leads to monotonous and template-based research that thwarts innovative ideas. Often the PG/PhD theses in such cases contain meaningless data that are not worthy of getting published anywhere. For instance, though the database of the Ayurveda theses and dissertations maintained by Girish KJ and Baghel MS contains more than 20,000 titles, however, as the entire PubMed database contains only 5000 articles on Ayurveda, the futility of these works becomes evident.

Lack of research-literacy and scientific pursuit

The research atmosphere in Ayurveda colleges and Universities is dampening. The ethical aspects of conducting and reporting the research are often overlooked in these institutions. Plagiarism and publishing with predatory journals are well-known problems in the sector. Unfortunately, many teachers from these institutions are themselves associated with many of the sub-standard journals, and hence the question of educating them is a challenge. The most striking problem is that there are no well-informed expert teachers who can train the students in research methods, biostatistics, scientific writing, research ethics etc. Many colleges are so ill-equipped that they thrive only because of the widespread corruption that prevails in the system. The fake data of patients they manufacture every day systematically save their recognition and serve as the basis of the dissertations and theses as well. The menace of ‘ghost faculty’ is another problem that adds to the gravity of the situation. The fabrication of data is so rampant in these institutions that it is better if it remains unpublished!

The absence of Ayurveda-principles-driven clinical research

The current clinical research in Ayurveda colleges revolves around the one drug-one disease model (or one intervention-one disease model) of clinical research method, which is most of the times not suitable for Ayurveda. Practice-based research must be the ideal mode of research in most of the circumstances, however, the fossilized mindset and lack of motivation to learn new methods have made the clinical studies stagnant. To most of the teachers in Ayurveda colleges, ‘whole system trials’ is still a new phrase. They do not venture into newer domains of research not only because of lack of experience but also because of lack of orientation.

The absence of basic-science research

Every department in Ayurveda colleges is unfortunately inclined at carrying out some or the other clinical trials on one or the other pretext. This has been a major setback to the basic research such as teaching methods, assessment methods, development of standard tools to assess clinical health parameters such as Agni, Ama, Koshtha etc. Students who fail to get admission in any clinical branch while pursuing postgraduation, try doing clinical work while being in a non-clinical branch which is not the ideal situation to be in. This way they neither become good clinicians nor do they gain expertise in basic science research.

Lateral entry of teachers from allied disciplines

A postgraduate degree holder in the subject Ayurveda Samhita and Siddhanta and one who has taught Charaka Samhita for ten years, for instance, can be inducted directly as a professor in Kriya Sharir as per the latest CCIM guidelines. This renders the seriousness, knowledge and skills required in the subject totally a non-issue. There are many more subjects with a similar provision of lateral entry. This especially is injurious to basic science subjects such as Kriya Sharir which require dedicated study of the subject.

Questioning: An Attitudinal Problem

A widespread perception that prevails among Ayurveda teachers is that there is no need for carrying out any research in Ayurveda because whatever has been written in ancient classical textbooks is the ultimate truth and has been written only after sound research. However, they fail to recognize that in classical textbooks too, it has been clearly stated that accepting any theory without repeatedly examining it is not a sign of a rationally minded physician. Further, the descriptions that were documented hundreds of years ago need not necessarily match with the present-day situation. There might have also been a loss of information during its transfer from one version of the textbook to the next. Therefore, there is a need for inculcating the habit of questioning among Ayurveda teachers and students, and only then, good research questions will emerge.

New Institutions in Isolation: Good or Bad for Ayurveda?

Of late, we have been witnessing a trend of establishing standalone Ayurveda universities and institutions/colleges both by Central and State governments. This strategy won’t serve the purpose of setting the right trend in education and research. I like to believe that this inclination stems out of a subconscious sense of diffidence that prevails among Ayurveda professionals. They often feel more secure when in isolation. In fact, we forget that a conducive atmosphere for research cannot be created on an isolated campus and students need enough exposure to multiple interrelated disciplines to be able to produce meaningful research output.

The following tables illustrate the differences in research output in different types of educational institutions. These institutions have been chosen randomly and for the purpose of illustration only. The years of establishment of these institutions have been provided so that a reasonable comparison can be drawn. The data is based on Scopus, and of course, there might be some unintentional omissions. However, the trend becomes very clear from the tables: the smaller and more isolated is the institution, the smaller and insignificant is the research output. A university such as BHU stands out so differently because of the multiple disciplines it hosts in the campus apart from Ayurveda which vary from physics, botany, zoology to molecular biology.

Therefore, the future step must be not to start new Ayurveda educational institutions in isolation, but to move the existing isolated Ayurveda educational institutions into the campuses of various State/ Central universities/ IITs/ /AIIMS/ other medical colleges and other premier institutes. Such an effort would probably be able to replicate the BHU model throughout the country and would improve the quality of research.

Note:

Following is the brief talk (first 8 minutes of the clip) on "Research Orientation in Ayurveda Educational Institutions" that I gave during the panel discussion on the occasion of National Symposium on Creating Conducive Environment for Ayurveda Research Organised by AYUSH Center of Excellence, Savitribai Phule Pune University, Pune.

What is wrong with public-funded Indian Universities?

The higher education sector in India has been largely a failure story- is what most of the analysts believe. Except for the few institutions such as IITs, AIIMSs, and Indian Institute of Science, most of the public funded Universities have shown their inabilities to keep themselves geared up to embrace the contemporary challenges with respect to quality of research, relevance of curricular contents and to the relevance of instructional methods. This write-up tries to enlist a few vital challenges that most of the Central and State-owned Indian universities have failed to recognize and address. These are based entirely on the perception and experience of the author’s working with a central university as a faculty member for about fifteen years. Some of the experiences mentioned in the article need not be from author’s direct experiences but may be anecdotal.

1. Illogical and bizarre Teachers’ Recruitment Process

Over the years, this author has realized that often the best candidates are not shortlisted and the worst among the shortlisted candidates are selected during the interviews as teachers. One of the reasons for this aberration is a ‘purely mathematical shortlisting strategy’ where only numbers matter and not quality. For instance, the shortlisting committee members themselves often are not sure of the quality of the journals where the candidate has published his/her research. They do not know if the impact factor claimed by the journal is true or fake one. Similarly, there is no criterion to ascertain if a certificate showing the participation of a candidate in an international conference is genuine one or is it of one of those with a single speaker from Nepal or Sri Lanka. What matters most is the certificate and the papers: the more the papers, the more are the points.

The second reason behind the selection of undeserving candidates is a poorly structured interviewing procedure. Most of the times the experts do not know the difference between a viva-voce examination and an interview. They mostly do not ask the candidate about his/her plans to improve the work output of the university or his/her ideas about the administration of academically active departments. They mostly end up asking questions that assess recall or, at the most, comprehension of their own subjects of expertise. They fail most of the times to evaluate one’s research skills and higher order thinking skills.

Another major problem that deals with the recruitment process is ‘canvassing’. Though most of the universities in their advertisements state that canvassing in any form would be a disqualification, practically there exists no such mechanism to disqualify the candidature. Most of the influential candidates use this method to gain access to recruiting authorities and ensure their selection. This author is yet to see a University that has taken up some tangible measures to curb such practices.

Suggested Measures:

A. Measures to improve the shortlisting mechanism:

It may be a good idea to include at least three domains of evaluation while shortlisting the candidates, especially where the number of applicants for a teaching post is more than that can be invited for an interview. Though this may not be applicable for all diverse disciplines, this idea is definitely implementable in science and other applied disciplines.

a) Writing Skills:

A written test be held where all the applicants are invited to write an examination. This test can be held online to save time and resources. This will test their expertise in the knowledge domain along with their writing skills. Written communication happens to be one of the weakest dimensions of skillsets among many university teachers- is what this writer has observed. This examination must include questions on higher order thinking skills such as analytical skills along with language skills. 1/3rd of the weightage may be given to this test based on the marks obtained.

b) Teaching Skills:

All candidates who score well (maybe those who score above the 75th percentile rank) in the test can be invited to give lectures to the UG and PG students. The evaluation may be done by students on a structured questionnaire that should include the assessment of communication skills, language skills, subject knowledge, presentation skills etc., and the average marks obtained may be given a weightage of another 1/3rd. This will test their teaching skills.

c) Research Skills and Aptitude:

University teachers must clearly know that research is expected out of them apart from their routine teaching. Hence, the remaining 1/3rd of the weightage may be given to the research aptitude. This could be calculated based on the quality of publications in terms of originality and general understanding of research and publication process. An objective rating scale may be evolved to evaluate each publication based on the number of citations received, quality of the published journal, indexing database, originality, extent of the contribution of the individual author etc.

After this exercise, the shortlisted candidates may be asked to appear for an interview. This list is likely to represent the candidates with a good combination of knowledge, skills, and attitude required for a teacher and a researcher. This method would avoid giving unnecessary and undue weightage to the number of conferences attended, the number of papers presented, the number of courses attended etc.

B. Measures to improve the interviewing process

The basic need is to train the experts to test one’s higher order thinking skills. Along with the invitation, a booklet on interviewing skills must also be sent to the experts and it must be ensured that they ask the questions to evaluate research aptitude, application skills and analytical skills of the candidates.

C. Measures to curb canvassing

Every university needs to come up with guidelines and measures to curb the practice of canvassing by announcing specific indicators of canvassing and the kind of evidence permitted as a proof of canvassing including the specific actions that are likely to be initiated against such candidates. During the interview, all the selection committee members may be asked to fill out a form to declare that they have not received any phone calls from influential people/ Politicians/ others in favor of any candidate, or, that any candidate has not visited their home pleading for his/her selection or has not offered any bribe etc. There must be some provision to report the cases of canvassing with evidence such as recorded phone calls, CCTV footages etc. There must be a form along with a list of admissible evidence which must be made available on the university websites so that the prospective candidates will not gather the courage to involve themselves in canvassing.

2. The absence of any publication guidelines

In the recent years, the quality of research publications from developing countries has been attracting criticism world over. For a country such as India, this situation is being proven to be damaging because it creates a bad reputation worldwide. University Grants Commission (UGC)’s guidelines mandating certain number of publications for promotions has fueled the mushrooming of substandard and questionable research journals that thrive on author-pays model and misuse the situation. Though some universities have started prescribing guidelines for their staff and students about the research publications, (for instance, Savitribai Phule University of Pune is one such university that has issued its own guidelines for publications), however, this has not yet become a norm.

Suggested Measures:

Instead of coming up with a whitelist of journals, UGC must state that journals indexed with more than one credible database such as Scopus, PubMed and Science Citation Index will be considered for promotion/ recruitment. UGC must come up with a warning to the university teachers about the consequences of publishing with predatory journals. Teachers publishing with such journals aiming at a promotion must be made answerable and a provision for imposing some disincentives must be introduced. Universities must release strict guidelines regarding the publications and the kinds of journals that are required to be avoided.

3. Poor intramural research funding arrangements

Though many new entry-level teachers get some seed money in many universities, there is no consistent funding arrangement for intramural research projects. Applying for extramural funding is always cumbersome and usually encounters a lot of hindrances at multiple levels. This often makes the senior teachers lose interest in research once they attain the highest level of promotion.

Suggested Measures:

Some competitive mechanism may be put in place so that a specific number of teachers may be declared eligible for receiving intramural funding based on their past performance/ project proposals.

4. Dogma of Seniority

Universities still consider that being senior in age and hierarchy equals to being wiser than all juniors: that is why many key positions such as Head, Dean, Principal etc are by default occupied by the “senior most” people irrespective of their academic, administrative and other capabilities. Sometimes these people are appointed on a rotational basis, but also based on seniority. On one hand, this makes uninterested people occupy key positions and on the other, it may make undeserving people misuse their positions.

Suggested Measures:

The appointments to the key positions such as Head, Dean, Director etc must all be made through inviting applications and only interested and capable people should get opportunities to occupy these positions. While to some extent the experience accompanied by seniority is required, it does not mean that all mid-career teachers are useless. Rather, mostly they are the ones who have the zeal to change the system in all possible positive ways and they should get opportunities to execute their dreams.

5. Compromised research and publication Ethics

While plagiarism and publication with poor quality journals are two well-known challenges, non-adherence with the ethical aspects of research and publication is another major problem the Universities have not yet been able to handle. There is no stringent mechanism to periodically screen for possible fabricated data, falsified data etc. While students want their degrees on a timely basis, often supervisors too want their list of “PhDs supervised” to grow quickly to be able to get more points for promotion. This often leads to compromised research ethics and publication ethics. Practices such as distortion of data, simultaneous submissions to more than one journal etc are very common in universities.

Suggested Measures:

There needs to be a mechanism to fix responsibility in cases of any fabrication or falsification of data. Dis-incentivization in the form of cutting down the increments will be helpful in proven cases of fraud. There must be a provision for sudden and surprise visits from external expert members to screen the progress of research work and to verify the raw data. Further, the cases of retractions and editorial queries/complaints must be taken up seriously by the authorities of the universities.

While these are a few steps that are possible to take, it depends entirely on the Syndicates and Executive Councils of the Universities whether they have the willingness to tackle these issues or not.

Note:

An edited version of this article has been published in University World News and is available at:
How can we fix what is wrong with Indian universities?