AICTE gives facelift to teacher recruitment process

All higher education institutions offering engineering, management and other technical programmes will now have to annually identify and fill up vacant posts of teachers.

The All India Council for Technical Institute (AICTE) has brought in a mandatory provision in its regulations for annual processing of promotion of teachers and filling up vacant posts through direct recruitment.

The move is aimed at ensuring that technical institutes main required faculty numbers and cadre ratio as per AICTE norms.

“Every University/College shall ensure that the selection process for direct recruitment for various positions is carried out annually so as to maintain required faculty numbers and cadre ratio as per AICTE norms so that no loss is caused to the students,” the AICTE regulations for the appointment of teachers and other academic staff stipulates.

The AICTE rules expect the directorates of technical education in the states to ensure that the mandatory provision for annual processing of promotion and recruitment of teachers are followed by the institutions functioning in their respective jurisdictions.

The vacancy of teachers in higher education institutions ranges from 30% to 50%, despite the government's repeated requests for filling them up. Promotion of the existing teachers is also delayed at most of the institutions.

The new AICTE rules address this problem. Also, if a teacher does not fulfill the minimum requirement for promotion as stipulated in the AICTE regulations, the institution will have to re-assess him or her after a period of one year.

“The date of promotion shall be the date on which he/she satisfies all the minimum requirements and successfully reassessed,” the AICTE rules stipulate.

The Human Resource Development (HRD) minister Ramesh Pokhriyal Nishank recently took stock of the vacancy of teachers in the universities and colleges and sought the higher education regulators including University Grants Commission (UGC) to prepare an action plan to fill up all the vacancies quickly.