Role of students’ feedback in professional development of faculty members: A study of a professional higher educational institution of Ranchi (India)

Professional Higher Educational Institutions (HEIs) in India are in the crossroad of sustainability and growth. Barring a few, most of the HEIs offering professional education in technology and management are struggling a lot to get reasonable intake (students) for their sustainability. There is an intense mismatch of demand and supply of intake for such HEIs. A good number of such institutions are competing in a reasonably smaller market of prospective students and getting landed into the red ocean. Being fascinated with the concept of survival of the fittest, those institutions keep on trying all possible permutations and combinations without keeping eye on overrunning of cost vis-à-vis revenue. Such attitude insists them to go for strategies like attractive hard infrastructure, lucrative offers and aggressive promotional activities to attract prospective students. In spite of all such extravagant strategies, most of the HEIs are struggling to get the admission figures that make them sustainable. It's because of their negligence to the known fact, i.e., non-saleable output (degree-holders) in the factor market. In building a brand, extravagant promotional activities fail to cope with the word-of-mouth promotion, for which nothing is to be paid. Students, ordinarily, join any professional program with an aspiration to get placed after the completion of the program. But placement depends upon the quality of the students and quality of the students is the reflection of the quality of teaching-learning process. The requirements for producing quality students who will be employable in the job market and become the brand ambassador of the institution are; hiring qualified and dedicated faculty members, facilitating faculty members to persistently develop and using students’ feedback as a tool for faculty development. Although of late students’ feedback on faculty members’ delivery has gained popularity in professional HEIs, the core essence of the same has not been taken aptly by all the stakeholders involved. Very often, students’ feedback is taken just for the sake of formality only. Keeping this in backdrop, this paper is thought of and for the purpose; faculty members and students of a professional HEI of Ranchi (India) are studied. Considering the sensitivity of the data, the name of the HEI is not revealed. In fact, the paper tries to unfold whether the students’ feedback has any contribution to professional development of faculty members. On the basis of the responses obtained and analyzed, it is inferred that the students’ feedback system can be regarded as a new tool for professional development of faculty members as it acts as a catalyst in bridging the communication gap between the students and the faculty members.