Employer-Employee Relationship and the Psychological Contract in an Era of Dominance of Workforce Below 30 Years

The higher technical educational institutions are witnessing a sea-change in terms of the profile of their faculty members. Most of the faculty members are academically highly qualified - post graduates, sometimes doctorates - and below 30 years of age. They are well-versed in their subjects, highly tech-savvy, poised and self-confident. The education sector has of late, become an attractive alternative for the young fresh graduates, possibly with the corporate sector becoming quite demanding. It is often observed that self-financed institutes are unable to attract competent senior faculty members in terms of age and experience due to various reasons. Most of the time,teaching like parenting is a thankless job. Teaching constantly requires inner motivational drive, due to lack of tangible results. A teacher has no control over his inputs (i.e. the quality of students). The teaching-learning process is highly individualistic and spread over various faculty members. The final product (the graduate student) is subject to a plethora of expectations from the employers of industry. There are more intangible factors involved in the performance evaluation of faculty members and they tend to be highly subjective. Under the above conditions, what do the young faculty members expect from the institutions, given the fact education is not a standardized process? This paper attempts to explore the faculty satisfaction/dissatisfaction with their job profiles, job contexts and job contents. Are the faculty members experiencing any gaps between their expectations and the perceived/unspoken promises (by the organization)? Do they experience any breach of psychological contract? If so, how do they cope with it? This is planned to be addressed on the basis of a structured survey of about 50 faculty members from the Engineering institute.