Professional education has expanded rapidly in the last few decades. Professional colleges such as those for medicine, engineering, management, pharmacy, architecture, etc. are established with the purpose of developing quality professionals. These professionals are molded by these colleges as per the requirement of society and nation. With the nation witnessing global challenges, the employees of these colleges, through their updated knowledge, skills, experience, are providing students able guidance and training in order to enable them to handle these challenges. Professional education helps students develop creative thinking; an attitude to act accordingly; an approach for continuous improvement; ethical values to justify their professional commitment; and the capacity to determine professional goals. The prerequisite of the desired outcome from the faculty is the healthy organizational climate of these colleges. Professional colleges have an important responsibilityto produce high quality professionals. These professionals should shoulder responsibility of the nation in future. Such goals can be achieved only when the employees (faculty members) feel satisfied with the climate of these colleges since the yield of quality professionals is largely dependent on these employees. In the present scenario, the researcher strongly feels that there is a need to study the present climate of professional colleges. The paper studies the organizational climate of professional colleges from the employees' point of view.

Organizational climate is comprised of mixture of norms, values, expectations, policies, and procedures that influence work motivation, commitment, and ultimately, individual and work-unit performance. Positive climate encourages, while negative climate inhibits discretionary effort. `Organizational climate' refers to the quality of working environment. If people feel that they are valued and respected within the organization, they are more likely to contribute positively to the achievement of business outcomes. Creating a `healthy' organizational climate requires attention to the factors which influence employees' perceptions, including the quality of leadership, the way in which decisions are made and whether the efforts of employees are recognized. In fact, "Climate may be thought of as the perception of the characteristics of an organization." (Kelly, Joe p. 483).

"Climate for an organization is somewhat like the personality for a person. Just as every individual has a personality that makes each person unique, each organization has an organizational climate that clearly distinguishes its personality from other organizations." (G James Francis and Gene Milbourn Jr., p. 92) Organizational climate is one of the most important concepts to enter into the theory of organizations in this century. The intensive research as well as debates on its conceptualization, and assessment during the last three and a half decades seems to have helped to develop organizational climate as a mature concept in management. The concept has also proved useful in predicting and explaining a variety of job-related behavior, attitudes and performance, and organizational performance.