House panel raps HRD ministry over teaching vacancies in universities

A parliamentary standing committee has rapped the Human Resource Development (HRD) ministry over a large number of faculty positions lying vacant in the centrally-funded higher education institutions, asking it to play “a proactive role” in expediting the filling up of the sanctioned posts.

The House panel in its report to Parliament recently has asked the ministry to work “in tandem with” the institutions towards filling up of vacancies and also work out a strategy to attract bright students to the teaching profession.

While over 6,000 teaching positions out of a total 18,243 sanctioned posts and as many as 12,323 non-teaching posts out of a total 34,928 sanctioned posts are lying vacant in 42 central universities, over 6,000 vacant posts of teachers in other higher education institutions including the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) and the National Institutes of Technology (NITs) are yet to be filled up.

“It may be justified to some extent that a large number of vacancies in the central universities set up in the past 3-4 years are yet to filled up. But the shortage of teachers in old universities, some of them established many decades back clearly indicates that this issue has not engaged the attention of the concerned authorities in the right perspective,” the House committee noted.

According to HRD ministry's data, Delhi University has a total of over 800 teaching posts lying vacant—the highest number of vacancies among all central universities—followed by the University of Allahabad 570, Aligarh Muslim University (AMU) 429 and Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) 335.

“There can be only two possibilities, either our young students are not attracted to the teaching profession or the recruitment process is a prolonged one and involves too many procedural formalities.” the parliamentary committee noted.

In either case, the higher education department of the ministry is the nodal authority for the entire country has to "take a proactive role” so as to expedite the filling up a sanctioned posts, it added.

The House committee recommended that the recruitment process should start well in advance before the post is vacated so that after retirement the newly recruited person takes up the position “immediately.”

To make the teaching profession more attractive, the committee, suggested that the faculty members should be encouraged to undertake consultancy and be given financial support for start-up projects.

“The higher education department along with the University Grants Commission (UGC) and the universities should also provide an opportunity to the teachers to present papers in academic conferences seminars or participate in workshops; exchange knowledge and ideas,” it suggested

The young faculty member should be given the opportunity to spend a short period of two weeks to two months at institutions of their choice for better academic exposure, it added.