Over 1200 engg faculty hired in 11 states to tide over shortage

At least 1,225 MTech and PhD freshers from reputed technical institutes "volunteer" for appointment as assistant professors for engineering colleges across 11 States to tide over a critical shortage of teaching faculty.

The appointments, including in Bihar, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan, is on a three-year contract.

The Human Resource Development (HRD) Ministry facilitated the appointments under a World Bank assisted programme, thereby filling up "all vacant posts" of assistant professors in 53 engineering colleges in one go.

"The new faculty will be paid Rs 70,000 a month and the (Central) government proposes to spend about Rs 375 crore over a 3-year period on this initiative," HRD Minister Prakash Javadekar told reporters here.

More than one lakh engineering students in the most backward areas would be benefited by "better quality education," he added.

"These students (faculty) opted for teaching job on contract basis with a spirit of patriotism. I thank them," the Minister added.

As many as 5,000 freshers with MTech or PhD degree had "voluntarily" applied for the job following "a public appeal" by the government.

Spirit of service

"Teachers do not want to go to far off locations or rural areas to teach at higher educational institutions. I admire the spirit of these fresh MTech and PhD scholars who came forward," the Minister said.

The contract faculty, many of whom have graduated from Indian Insitutes of Technology, Indian Institute of Science, National Institutes of Technology (NITs) and other centrally-funded premier technical institutes, have been appointed to teach at engineering colleges in Andaman and Nicobar, Assam, Jammu and Kashmir, Odisha, Jharkhand, Tripura, Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, among others.

"The entire process of call for and selection was through a competitive and rigorous process of selection done through NITs in a record 2-month period," the Minister said.