Universities want freedom in recruitment

The vice-chancellors of central universities have recommended that they should be given the freedom to recruit short-term faculties at various levels, both from within the country and abroad.

At a one-day conference of the vice-chancellors, convened by President Pranab Mukherjee on February 5, they also suggested that outstanding scholars be given a relaxation in terms of experience.

The vice-chancellors also favoured setting up of an independent council of central universities.

“In their individual presentations, the vice-chancellors also highlighted the need to speedily fill up the faculty vacancies in the central universities and the posts of visitors nominees,” a government official said

The one-day conference, held at Rashtrapati Bhavan, was attended by vice-chancellors of 40 central universities. The last such conference was convened in 2003, during the tenure of erstwhile President A P J Abdul Kalam.

On the steps needed to extend the reach of education through extension work in contiguous areas, the vice-chancellors suggested that each university should connect itself with a community, identify a cluster of affiliates and create a consortium of stakeholders.

Universities should nurture and develop “Lok Vidya” - traditional knowledge and skills - and prepare a directory of projects and facilitate grassroot-level innovators, they recommended.They also favoured the government’s plan to establish innovation centres and research parks in the central universities.

On the use of national knowledge network effectively in the central universities, the vice-chancellors agreed upon setting up education technology cells in their respective institutions to devise programmes for the maximum use of education technology tools and focus on content development.

They supported the idea of utilising video conferencing facilities, setting up e-classrooms, use of e-content in regular curriculum transactions and hosting classroom teaching videos on the university website for access by other institutions