The response from our colleagues at JNU, while interesting and in some ways admirable, does not relate to what we wrote in our Op-Ed on April 16. Our article discussed salaries in 28 countries and how they compare. We pointed out that in almost all countries, academic salaries do not compare favourably with salaries of similarly educated people, and that the academic profession has problems attracting the ‘best and brightest.” We did not advocate any particular way of evaluating academic performance.
We agree with our JNU colleagues that an overly bureaucratic university structure and highly quantitative and uniform measures of academic performance are problematical for creating an academic community or assuring productivity. But measures of academic performance are needed in complex academic systems, and it is legitimate and indeed necessary for both teaching and research quality to be rigorously measured. Shared governance means that there must be respect for the academic community — at the same time university administration and bodies such as the UGC play a legitimate role as well.
(Philip G. Altbach is at Boston College in the United States.)
