Tag: Central Universities

Despite Recruitment Drive, Only 30% Of Vacancies in Quota Posts Filled at IITs, Central Unis

The dismal numbers come against the backdrop of a year-long ‘recruitment drive’, which began in September 2021, to hire faculty belonging to Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes and Other Backward Classes in elite universities.

New Delhi: Only around 30% of faculty vacancies under the reserved category were filled at the Indian Institutes of Technology and Central Universities despite a year-long recruitment to fill these posts, the education ministry has told parliament.

Between September 5, 2021, and September 5, 2022, 1,439 vacancies were identified, against which only 449 faculty members were recruited, it said.

The dismal numbers come against the backdrop of the year-long ‘recruitment drive’, which began in September 2021, to hire faculty belonging to Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes and Other Backward Classes in elite universities, the Hindu reported.

The data was revealed after S. Venkatesan of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) asked this question in the Lok Sabha, when the minister of state for education, Annapurna Devi, was presenting data on this ‘recruitment drive’.

The Union government had directed 23 IITs and 45 Central Universities across the country to fill up vacancies in teaching positions under these reserved categories.

However, after more than a year, only 10 IITs were able to identify 342 vacancies in these categories for the positions of professors, associate professors and assistant professors. A total of 237 positions in these categories were filled at 19 IITs.

The newspaper quoted a data analysis done by the Ambedkar Periyar Phule Study Circle (APPSC) of IIT Bombay, which said that 13 IITs were unable to identify vacancies to be filled in this recruitment drive because they follow a “flexible cadre structure for faculty positions”.

The analysis further showed that 358 vacancies remained at 14 IITs at the end of this recruitment exercise.

The APPSC also found that no ST candidates were recruited at IIT Kharagpur, IIT Roorkee, IIT ISM Dhanbad, IIT Tirupati, IIT Goa and IIT Dharwad, during the one-year period. No SC candidate was recruited in IIT Roorkee.

It also found that most IITs did not recruit SC/ST/OBC candidates at the professor and associate professor levels.

What about Central Universities?

Government data showed that only 33 out of the 45 Central Universities had identified a total of 1,097 vacancies in reserved categories, of which only 212 were filled.

Among these 33 universities, 18 of them had recruited no SC/ST/OBC teaching faculty at all, the daily reported, citing the data.

The data also revealed that among these 18 Central Universities, the Jawaharlal Nehru University had identified 75 vacancies, the Banaras Hindu University identified 114 vacancies, and the Babasaheb Bhimrao Ambedkar University identified seven vacancies. None of the identified vacancies were filled in any of these universities.

At least 12 Central Universities did not recruit any faculty during this drive, saying that they had no backlog and could not identify any vacancies in these categories, the report added.

As of September this year, government data showed that Central Universities had a combined backlog of over 920 positions in the SC/ST/OBC categories for teaching faculty.

Violation of reservation policy

According to the Press Trust of India, the Supreme Court has recently directed the Union government to follow the reservation policy for the recruitment of faculty members at IITs as provided under the Central Educational Institutions (Reservation in Teachers’ Cadre) Act, 2019.

The Act provides quotas in teaching positions in central institutions for persons belonging to SC, ST, socially and educationally backward classes, and those from economically weaker sections.

The petition alleged that IITs are not following the guidelines of reservation as per the constitutional mandate.

It claimed the IITs were not following a transparent process of recruiting faculty members, which opened up a window for non-deserving candidates to enter the prestigious institutions through connections that increased the chances of corruption, favouritism and discrimination.

The plea also sought to cancel the recruitment of non-performing faculty due to a violation of reservation norms.

The Wire had in August reported, citing responses based on a Right to Information (RTI) query, that IITs are flouting reservation policy in faculty recruitment.

The authors of this report analysed the data, and said that “it appears as though the IITs are exclusively employing ‘upper-caste’ teachers.”

Explainer: What We Know About UGC’s Common Entrance Test for Undergrad Admissions

The CUET will be a computerised test to be conducted by the National Testing Agency (NTA) and the application window for the same will reportedly open from the first week of April.

New Delhi: The University Grants Commission (UGC) has announced that admission into undergraduate courses in all centrally-funded universities will henceforth be solely on the basis of a Common University Entrance Test (CUET) and Class 12 board examination marks will not be considered.

On Monday, March 21, UGC chairman M. Jagadesh Kumar said that the CUET will be held in the first week of July and that all 45 central universities will have to admit students on the basis of their scores on the test. Class 12 Board Exam marks will no longer be considered, however, the UGC noted that these marks could still be used as an ‘eligibility criterion,’ casting doubts on the actual value of these scores.

The CUET will be a computerised test to be conducted by the National Testing Agency (NTA) and the application window for the same will reportedly open from the first week of April. Following the exam, the NTA will prepare a merit list on the basis of which these universities will admit students.

Delhi University (DU), Jamia Millia Islamia (JMI), Aligarh Muslim University (AMU), Jawaharlal Nehru University (JU) and Banaras Hindu University (BHU) are some of the most well-known of the 45 central universities.

A common entrance exam for university admissions is reportedly meant to level the playing field for aspirants as different examination boards in the country may mark students differently. The Indian Express quoted an unnamed government official as saying, “Some Boards are more generous than others in marking and this gives their students an unfair advantage over others.”

Kumar told NDTV that he thought the introduction of the CUET will save students from the “stress of impossibly high cut-offs for admission”. Last year, eight DU colleges had set cut-offs at 100% marks for 11 courses.

Moreover, according to the UGC, the CUET is expected to reduce financial burden on parents and students, as candidates will only have to write one exam.

The academic community appears to be divided on the efficacy of such a test, with some expressing misgivings on the reduced roles of schools.

Test structure

The computerised CUET is a three-and-a-half hour test consisting of multiple-choice questions with negative marking for incorrect answers. According to Kumar, the syllabus of the test will mirror the Class 12 model syllabus of the National Council for Educational Research and Training (NCERT).

The test will be divided into three essential parts. The first will test a candidate on their language skills in a language of their choice, which can be either Hindi, English, Marathi, Gujarati, Tamil, Telegu, Kannada, Malayalam, Urdu, Assamese, Bengali, Punjabi or Odia. 

Apart from this compulsory section, candidates can also choose to take another test in an additional language such as French, Spanish, German, Nepali, Persian, Italian, Arabic, Sindhi, Kashmiri, Konkani, Bodo, Dogri, Maithili, Manipuri, Santhali, Tibetan, Japanese, Russian and Chinese.

The second part of the test will ask domain-specific questions. Candidates can choose to take tests on at least one and at most six of the 27 available domains, which encompass the standard subjects from across the various ‘streams’ of high school education, such as chemistry or physics in the science stream; accounts or business studies in the commerce stream; and psychology or sociology in the humanities stream.

The third section will be a general aptitude test including questions on current affairs, general knowledge, reasoning, numerical ability and so on.

While one language test is compulsory, a candidate may choose to take the other tests based on the demands of each central university for the particular course they are applying for. Some courses may require certain domain-specific tests while some may only require the language and general ability tests.

Reservation

The CUET will not affect the reservation policies of colleges, such as JMI and AMU, which reserve a section of seats for minority students. 

“The universities can enrol candidates for the general seats as well as for the reserved seats on the basis of CUET scores. It will not impact the existing admission and reservation policy that are in accordance with the ordinances of the varsity,” UGC chairman Kumar said.

However, all students will have to take the CEUT and will only be admitted on the basis of these scores.

AMU and JMI are yet to issue statements on the CUET and officials of both universities have noted that they are awaiting official communications from the UGC. JMI has constituted a committee of some officials to study how the CUET can be conducted for admission to the varsity.

Foreign students will be exempted from the CUET and will continue to be admitted in accordance with the existing practice the universities have on a supernumerary basis.

The universities will be allowed to conduct practical and interviews for courses like music, fine arts, theatre, along with CUET.

Importantly, there will be no central counselling offered for the CUET, as is done with the National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (NEET) and the Joint Entrance Exam (JEE). Universities will have their own counselling.

Watch: NEET-PG Counselling: Why Have Young Doctors Taken To The Streets?

While the test is compulsory for the 45 central universities, state and private universities and institutes deemed to be universities can also use CUET scores for undergraduate and postgraduate admissions if they want, Kumar said.

“We hope that all the universities adopt the CUET for postgraduate programmes,” he added.

(With PTI inputs)

Almost Half of All Central Universities Functioning Without a Regular Vice-Chancellor

Education ministry officials have said that the delay was because the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) had failed to approve the files of the shortlisted candidates.

New Delhi: Nearly half of the Central universities in the country are currently operating without a regular vice-chancellor, which has hampered their ability to recruit permanent teachers and implement the National Education Policy’s features, according to a report in The Telegraph.

Of the country’s 45 Central universities, 20 were functioning without a regular vice-chancellor, the report said. The 20 Central universities which are currently without any regular VCs include leading educational institutions like Banaras Hindu University, Delhi University and Jawaharlal Nehru University.

They also include North-Eastern Hill University (Shillong), Manipur University, Assam University (Silchar), Guru Ghasidas University (Chhattisgarh), Sagar University (Madhya Pradesh), two Sanskrit universities in Delhi, two Central universities each in Bihar and Jammu and Kashmir, and one Central university each in Jharkhand, Rajasthan, Haryana, Tamil Nadu, Himachal Pradesh and Nagaland.

For 12 of these universities, selection committees had conducted interviews and submitted the names of the shortlisted candidates for the posts of vice-chancellor four months ago, two education ministry officials in the know told the daily. For the other eight universities, the selection process was yet to commence.

The ministry officials also said that the delay was because the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) had failed to approve the files of the shortlisted candidates.

Speaking on the condition of anonymity, a DU professor said that the government was suffering from “policy paralysis”. “They are so driven by ideology that they do not bother about higher education institutions,” the professor said.

However, a senior education ministry official said that legally, the PMO had no role to play in the appointment of VCs. “The ministry has to send the file (of shortlisted candidates) to the President, who is the Visitor of the central universities and makes the final selection,” the official said and added that it would usually take a week to issue the appointment letters then. “However,” the official said, “these days the files are sent to the PMO unofficially. The files are delayed there.”

Also read: Like it or Not, Faculty Shortages in Indian Universities Are Now Permanent

The Prime Minister’s Office vets the shortlisted candidates and sends the list back to the education ministry with its recommendation, following which, the ministry sends the file to the President along with a verbal communication about the government’s preferences.

As per procedure, the education ministry must set up a search cum-selection committee to find a successor at least six months before a vice chancellor’s term ends. The committee will then submit a ‘panel’ of around three names to the ministry for informal ‘vetting’ and ‘due diligence’. These are then sent ahead to the Visitor to all central universities, which is the office of the President of India, for approval, after which the final appointments are announced.

Last August, selection panels held interviews to shortlist VCs for Shri Lal Bahadur Shastri National Sanskrit University and the Central Sanskrit University in Delhi. However, since then, the files with the shortlisted candidates have been awaiting approval from the PMO, officials said.

In most of the 20 universities, the outgoing VCs had received extensions while in the rest, the senior-most professor had been appointed as the acting VC, a DU professor said.

“The VCs on extension and the acting VCs are hesitant to decide key issues such as the implementation of the NEP, for instance, starting inter-disciplinary courses and four-year undergraduate programmes, or discontinuing the MPhil courses,” the DU professor said and added that acting VCs were also hesitant to plan academic activities during the pandemic or decide on starting COVID-19 care centres on campuses or exempting students from paying fees for facilities that remain unused since the institutions are closed.

Additionally, interim VCs are not allowed to recruit any permanent teachers or employees as well.

Last week, the RSS-affiliated Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) also urged President Ram Nath Kovind to “appoint full-time vice chancellors, thus filling in the vacancy or replacing the temporary vice chancellors in 21 central universities”.

The press release by the ABVP said that in Central universities in Rajasthan, Himachal Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Meghalaya, the appointment of VCs had been pending for over a year. “In Manipur, the appointment has not been made even after the interviews concluded in August last year,” it said.

“Absence of a full-time vice chancellor for more than a year in some central universities is a matter of grave concern. The vice chancellor plays a major role in academic and administrative activities in the university,” national general secretary of the ABVP, Sushri Nidhi Tripathi, said.

Furthermore, the IITs at Bhubaneswar, Patna, Indore and Mandi have also been without regular directors for over a year. While a selection panel headed by education minister Ramesh Pokhriyal had last year interviewed candidates for IIT Bhubaneswar and IIT Patna, the PMO had not returned the files.

Parliament Approves Teachers Reservation Bill

The bill aims to provide for reservation in appointments through direct recruitment of persons belonging to the SC, ST, socially and economically backward classes in 41 Central Education institutions.

New Delhi: The Indian parliament on Wednesday passed a bill to provide reservation for filling vacancies of teachers in central education institutes. The bill would also enable universities or colleges to be considered as an unit instead of department.

The passage of the Central Educational Institutions (Reservation in Teachers’ Cadre) Bill, 2019 in Rajya Sabha would help in filling up the existing over 7,000 vacancies in the central universities, HRD minister Ramesh Pokhriyal said.

The bill, which was cleared by the Lok Sabha on Monday, seeks to replace an ordinance issued in March this year.

Also read: Supreme Court Order on Faculty Quota Could See Reduction in SC, ST and OBC Teachers

Replying to the debate, Pokhriyal said the the bill aims to provide for reservation of posts in appointments through direct recruitment of persons belonging to the SC, ST, Socially and Economically Backward Classes and Economically Weaker Sections (EWS) in teachers’ cadre in 41 Central Education institutions.

He added there is provision of 10% reservation for Economically Weaker Section (EWS) in this bill also and the government has already approved allocation of over Rs 770 crore for the same.

Pokhriyal said the bill would give a major push to reforms in the education sector in the country.

Replying to opposition members criticism for the government taking the ordinance route for the bill, the minister said the ordinance was issued as the Supreme Court had declined to consider the government view and rejected a review petition.

“After the court decision, the government did not sit silent. We were constantly fighting to safeguard the interest of SC/STs. It was in that spirit that we brought in an ordinance on March 7,” Pokhriyal said.

The bill proposes to make universities the base unit rather than a department for providing reservation to teachers in universities.

Also read: Despite the Rhetoric, the 10% Reservation Bill Does Not Aim for a Caste-Free System

It seeks to restore the earlier reservation system based on 200 point roster.

In March, the cabinet had cleared an ordinance on reservation mechanism for appointment of faculties in universities.

Earlier, the University Grants Commission had announced in March, 2018 that an individual department should be considered as the base unit to calculate the number of teaching posts to be reserved for the SC and ST candidates, following an order by the Allahabad high court in April 2017.

The Supreme Court had in February dismissed a review petition filed by the HRD ministry after its special leave petition against the court order was rejected by the apex court.

This was met with protests from teachers and students across the country.

Let’s Leave Research to the Researchers

Top-down authoritarian control of science is detrimental for three reasons, and the most important among them is that it doesn’t make room for passion.

In a recent article in the Hindustan Times, Amitabha Bhattacharya, a retired IAS officer, defended the Centre’s now-defunct directive that research in central universities must be aligned to “national priorities” and avoid “irrelevant” topics. His defence was ostensibly to enhance the quality of PhD research.

However, he failed to mention how working on topics specified by the government could increase the quality of research nor is there any clarity on of what “irrelevant” research is and what research is of “national importance”. Will the government come up with a list of topics that scientists and scholars can study? Will they stop people from studying esoteric topics like how the green algae move?

If there was any doubt about what a “national priority” topic could be, the author gives a clue, although it doesn’t carry official sanction.

Any neutral person would be able to observe the dominance of the left-of-the-centre academicians, especially in the social sciences, and more so in Kolkata and Delhi. Within the constitutional framework, it would be natural for its opponents to expand their domain. While the views of the other should be relentlessly questioned, they should be tolerated as well.

The issue started with a circular issued in the Central University of Kerala, Kasargod, which said:

In accordance with the decisions of the said meeting, the vice-chancellor has directed to implement the following in Central University of Kerala: a) To discourage research in irrelevant areas …

When fellows are being admitted for PhDs, the topics for the thesis should be in accordance with the national priorities. Allotting privilege (sic) topics to the PhD students should be dispensed with.

Following widespread outrage in the media and the resignation of a faculty member from the university’s Board of Studies, the government did a volte face and blamed it on an enthusiastic “junior bureaucrat”. However, this idea was the result of a meeting at the Ministry of Human Resource Development and the minutes had been circulated to all central universities.

Although scholars accused the government of attempting to stamp out dissent, denying research on caste issues and saffronising higher education, it’s hard to gauge the spirit of the message itself. Speaking to The Wire earlier, K. Vijayaraghavan, principal scientific adviser to the Government of India, had played it off as a botched attempt to improve research quality.

But the quality of PhD research can’t be improved by narrowing the fields of study but by increasing the breadth of research areas together with funding. Research quality depends on – and is even a proxy for – good monetary and intellectual resources; the latter can only be nurtured in a culture that rewards fearless thinking that is both creative and critical. This in turn means academic and research institutions can have greater autonomy.

Non-zero accountability

Bhattacharya’s second argument is one of accountability. He writes:

Can the state be a helpless witness to the abysmal quality of research that many of our universities produce? While academic freedom has to be valued and defended, should it be allowed to degenerate into a system of zero accountability in which attempts to deviate from the past norms are scoffed at?

The government is well within its rights to worry about the quality of research but it is a stretch to claim there is “zero accountability”. The academic infrastructure includes research scholars, students, technicians, bureaucrats and politicians, and all of these people must share the blame for this failure. Moreover, it only stands to reason that the same issues will also assail research in “national priority” areas as well.

Bhattacharya also points to the dangerous phenomenon of ‘fake theses’ but does not elaborate on how research on “national priority” areas will be exempt from this problem.

Indeed, India is among the world’s prolific publishers of predatory journals, and the government has taken some steps (of varying efficacy) to cut them down.

However, predatory publishing became more pronounced after the University Grants Commission implemented its academic performance indicators (API) for the career growth of college and university teachers. The scheme forced them to publish in order to qualify for promotions, etc., but didn’t give them the requisite funds or training. In effect, the government introduced a top-down solution to increase research quality but it backfired so much that the government was forced to change the API’s norms.

On the one hand, it is heartening to see the government attempt to improve scientific integrity among the country’s students. But on the other, research misconduct – including plagiarism – and predatory publishing remain beasts yet to be slain.

There are also uncomfortable questions about the people on the top of the food chain, to the extent that the problem seems systemic. For example, Pondicherry University fired its vice-chancellor after a protracted battle for plagiarism in her PhD only to find her successor under a cloud of similar allegations.

A large part of India’s impression as the world’s predatory publishing capital is thanks to the OMICS group. It was recently fined $50 million (Rs 347.1 crore) by the US Federal Trade Commission for duping research scholars into publishing in its pages. If it is accountability that Bhattacharya seeks, the government should shut OMICS down – although that is unlikely to happen given its partnership with the Uttar Pradesh government – instead of limiting research options for its scholars.

The attempt to focus research on certain “thrust” areas is not new. All government funding agencies that set the research agenda already have such focuses. However, academics fear that the new move might be inspired by more by nationalistic fervour and that it will be implemented in a high-handed manner.

There is also a conversation to be had about whether what works better: research on “national priority” areas or passion-based research. As Gautam Menon wrote for The Wire:

Let each university propose one thrust area that it feels it can best contribute to, in the form of a centre. This thrust area could be decided by reasons of geographical location and departmental strengths, as well as community and possibly private support. A coastal university might want to address problems of overfishing and its environmental impact, while a university in northern India might be better placed to address problems of groundwater depletion. …

[The] centres could incorporate specific academic members with a clear idea of how their abilities could help tackle the larger questions. The government could support these centres by funding leadership positions, the PhD students who work at the centre and even the research itself. This way … academics whose work does not directly relate to national priorities but who are otherwise doing what would be expected of them under normal circumstances could be spared the need to shoehorn themselves in.

Room for passion

Top-down authoritarian control of science is detrimental for three reasons. First: it can influence the natural process of arriving at a scientific consensus among competing theories. The weight of the government’s machinery might favour the wrong theory because of ideological affinities. Second: governments should hedge their bets when investing in the future of science. In predicting the next big scientific breakthrough, and focusing on a few narrow areas of research, could lead us to lose out on future benefits.

Third, and most important: it does not make room for passion. This might be a radical idea for an educational system that bins students into professional streams of learning based on standardised test scores. However, a PhD is an arduous personal undertaking, and research suggests students who who do better at it are the ones passionate about their research topics. So force-feeding research topics will only make the problem worse.

Nationalistic fervour working against scientific practice has historical precedence, that of Trofim Lysenko being the most (in)famous. Instead of getting students to produce knowledge that it considers useful, the government should encourage research in all directions – even ones without immediate economic benefits – and should not brand it using pejoratives like “useless”.

For example, studies of how green algae move towards sources of light has led to breakthroughs in optogenetics, promising new ways to treat brain disorders. That suffices to say let’s leave research to the researchers.

Leslee Lazar is a cognitive neuroscientist and a visual artist. He currently teaches at IIT Gandhinagar and tweets @leslee_lazar.

Research Has to Be Nudged Into ‘National Interest’ Areas – Not Sledgehammered

The Central University of Kerala’s intention to curtail research in areas not of “national priority” penalises the discovery of new solutions to old problems, and is itself not in the national interest.

Approaches to public policy in higher education are usually either sledgehammers or nudges. The sledgehammer assumes a straightforward link between policy and outcome, and seizes on the most obvious way to connect them. The nudge recognises that individual agency is important, that the road to an outcome may not be immediately obvious and that the management of change is important, especially when working within a pre-existing structure.

Sledgehammer approaches are easiest to understand and explain, but the nudge can be more effective in the long term.

As an example of the sledgehammer, consider the academic performance indicators (APIs) that the University Grants Commission (UGC) introduced in 2010. The APIs were intended to provide easily evaluated and quantitative criteria to assess academics’ performance. Among other things, it assigns a numerical score to papers published by college and university teachers in academic journals. A higher API was intended to correlate to faster career advancement.

Unsurprisingly, the APIs also introduced a perverse incentive to publish as much as possible, since quality was not an explicit consideration. And many academics quickly seized this opportunity. A host of India-based predatory open-access journals, in which authors could pay to have their papers published with minimal scrutiny, emerged. In response, the UGC prepared a whitelist of journals, and declared only papers in these journals would be considered.

Also read: University to Scholars: Work on ‘National Priorities’, Not ‘Irrelevant Research’

In another example of this paradigm, the UGC in 2017 asked all central universities in India to sign a joint agreement with itself and the Ministry of Human Resource Development. On the face of it, the intention was to make publicly funded higher education more self-sufficient. Eligibility for government funding was tied to the institution accepting the tripartite agreement.

A review meeting of vice-chancellors from these central universities was held on December 15, 2018. After the meeting, the registrar of the Central University of Kerala (CUK), Kasaragod, issued a letter addressed to the deans and heads of departments at CUK saying that the vice-chancellor had proposed to henceforth “discourage research in irrelevant areas”.

The letter goes on to state: “When fellows are being admitted for PhDs, the topics for the thesis should be in accordance with the national priorities”.

It further instructed the heads of departments and their colleagues to prepare a “shelf of project (sic) to be taken for research study pertaining to their subject considering national priorities”. The students could opt only from this “shelf of project” for their research.

India’s “national priorities” certainly include the core areas of energy, environment and sanitation. The Government of India’s flagship schemes also count among them. Clean energy, water technology, air pollution, cyber-physical systems, quantum information science, geospatial capacity and technology development for rural livelihood have all been highlighted as areas of study that are particularly relevant to India at this time.

There is no doubt that Indian science and technology is far less integrated with national needs than it should be. But what might have served better here: a sledgehammer or a nudge? CUK’s policy addresses the gap between requirement and supply in a particularly direct way; it’s the sledgehammer. But the example of the APIs should alert us to the especial risk of adverse consequences.

Universities choose their faculty members for their ability to teach and to conduct research. While teaching is usually primary, a commitment to research and training PhD students are both almost always essential as well. The students receive training that prepares them to undertake good, original research.

As a result, it is usually considered a good idea for a department to cover diverse areas of research. Only then can PhD students choose from a variety of subjects to work on, identifying those problems that best fit their own abilities and interests.

In this context, the idea of a “shelf of projects” addressing “national priorities” raises several issues.

The first is practicability. A typical department has hired its faculty members over many years expecting they will teach and conduct research across a broad set of topics. However, a mathematician working in algebraic geometry might not be the appropriate person to address problems in power generation. Similarly, a particle physicist would be ill-suited to study water pollution.

If students are to work on projects that will spur them to do good, original work in an Indian context, why limit these to be drawn from a “shelf of national priorities”, that too set elsewhere and guided by someone with little to no background in thinking about them? The most likely result would be uninspired work in those very areas of national importance that should attract the best and most committed.

Second: Who will decide the quality of a proposal under the “national priority” category? “National priority” problems are unusually interdisciplinary. For example, any reasonable approach to cleaning the Ganga should call on the joint expertise of hydrologists, environmental engineers, chemical engineers, applied mathematicians, microbiologists, public health experts, sociologists and political scientists.

The CUK registrar’s letter is noticeably silent on this point. It likely assumes that the faculty member who proposes a project will also do due diligence on the relevance and feasibility fronts. But this is just unrealistic.

The third, and final, issue is the assumption that a pre-packaged project addressing national priorities is more likely to succeed than simply training students to be good academics and then exposing them to hard problems. If the training that PhD students receive is superficial, the projects they will undertake will be equally superficial.

On the other hand, a well-trained student steeped in the methods of a specific discipline, and interested in crossing disciplinary boundaries, should clearly be the ideal output of a successful programme aimed at national priorities.

Also read: By Sidestepping Reservations, the Prime Minister’s Research Fellowship May Be Unconstitutional

Here’s one nudge alternative: let each university propose one thrust area that it feels it can best contribute to, in the form of a centre. This thrust area could be decided by reasons of geographical location and departmental strengths, as well as community and possibly private support. A coastal university might want to address problems of overfishing and its environmental impact, while a university in northern India might be better placed to address problems of groundwater depletion.

These proposals would be cross-departmental, even cross-institutional. The corresponding centres could incorporate specific academic members with a clear idea of how their abilities could help tackle the larger questions. The government could support these centres by funding leadership positions, the PhD students who work at the centre and even the research itself.

This way, for one, academics whose work does not directly relate to national priorities but who are otherwise doing what would be expected of them under normal circumstances could be spared the need to shoehorn themselves in. They can continue to provide – as they are required to – broad academic training to students in a disciplinary context. The very presence of a focused centre should draw the students with specific interests.

With time, it’s possible that more academics and their students might want to explore the possibilities such a centre would provide. This nudge would allow them agency – and not penalise them for retaining their primary interests – while providing for an environment that organically welcomes new disciplinary approaches.

For those who – by virtue of their training, abilities and interest – are motivated to study projects related to national priorities, there are several advantages. These projects will cut across departments, bringing a wider range of cross-disciplinary academic training to bear. They will be assured of flexible funding towards a well-defined goal. These projects are also likelier to keep local interests and problems in mind, strengthening links between the university and the immediate community to which it belongs.

Gautam I. Menon is a Professor at the Institute of Mathematical Sciences, Chennai. The views expressed are his own.

Why Are There No OBC Professors in Central Universities?

Representation of OBCs in central universities is lagging even ten years after reservations were implemented.

It’s been ten years since OBC reservations for university faculty members went into effect, but representation in these circles still remains marginal. In fact, the University Grants Commission (UGC), in a reply to an RTI, has declared that there are no OBC faculty members at the professor and associate professor levels in any of the 40 central universities. Additionally,  and that OBC reservations are implemented only at the entry level, that is, at assistant professor-level.

Out of 17,106 sanctioned posts at all three levels – professor, associate professor and assistant professor – only 1,897 are sanctioned for the OBC category, and only at the assistant professor level. That means only 5.8% of the total reserved posts are sanctioned for OBCs. The RTI also reveals that out of these sanctioned posts, 47.65% of these are still empty in central universities. Currently, OBC representation is even lower than that for SC/ST candidates, who also have reservations extended to all three levels:  professor, associate professor and assistant professor level.

Table 1: Representation of OBCs in various positions in Central Universities as on 01/04/2017, Credit: RTI Reply

Reservations for OBCs are applicable at the assistant professor level in central universities and as lecturers in various technical institutions like IITs, NITs, IISER, and ISM. However, in the recruitment of faculty posts in subjects apart from science and technology i.e. humanities, social sciences, and management, 27% of reservations for OBCs is applicable for all professor posts including associate professor and professor in these institutions.

In non-teaching posts, only 11.96% are sanctioned for OBCs and out of all sanctioned OBC posts (4,117), about 47.04% are vacant. Although the UGC is regularly sending reminders to the vice-chancellors of various central universities, but university administrations seem indifferent to filling OBC seats.

In a report by the Lok Sabha committee on welfare of other backward classes, ‘Measures undertaken to secure representation of OBCs and for their welfare in universities and other higher educational/technical institutions’ many institutions were questioned about their lack of OBC staff and replied that “no suitable candidates were found”. The report also documented various issues related to OBC reservations in educational institutions and suggested corrective policy measures.

The OBC reservation falls flat if it is not implemented properly and completely, and the government of India needs to focus on remedying this. These reservations in higher education provide an opportunity for OBC youth to pursue higher education – there has been an increase in OBC PhD holders since the implementation of reservations in 2007, and the surge for teaching positions must come soon as well.

Gowd Kiran Kumar is a PhD student in the Department of Political Science, University of Hyderabad.

Like it or Not, Faculty Shortages in Indian Universities Are Now Permanent

While the easy explanation for shortages is the inadequate supply of qualified faculty, the truth is more complicated.

Two recent reports – one on faculty shortages in new central universities and the other on faculty shortages and the growing numbers of part-time faculty in older central universities – provide a glimpse into the broken state of India’s higher education.

While the new central universities that are being set up since the past decade or so – in Haryana, Gujarat, Odisha, Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu, Jammu and Kashmir and Bihar – are functioning with around 52% of the sanctioned faculty strength, even some of the older ones, such as Allahabad University and Delhi University, have vacancies of 64.44% and 47.7%, respectively. Overall, the total vacancies in new central universities are nearly 48%; the older universities are better off with 33% vacancies.

These universities manage to barely do just about enough in terms of teaching by using large armies of ad hoc or part-time faculty. Indeed, all government universities make generous use of part-time faculty out of necessity, because they do not have budgets to hire full-time faculty. Faculty positions must first be sanctioned by the state government and since nearly none of the states are keen on improving higher education, the universities cope with depleted numbers of faculty members as older ones continue to retire. Hiring ad hoc faculty – who are poorly paid – is the only affordable option but over time, if not absorbed into the system, they lose all motivation to do the job well. Ad hoc faculty allow the institution to continue offering courses and programmes but it is well-established that institutions with relatively higher numbers of such faculty do a less-than-satisfactory job in classroom instruction. Students suffer as a result.

If things are bad at elite institutions such as central universities and much, much worse at state universities, and given that faculty shortages are just one of the many gaping holes in the higher education sector, it is not hard to imagine just how dire the situation really is. More worryingly, faculty shortages seem to have become a permanent feature of India’s universities.

The book is a rare, necessary, comprehensive and action-oriented book that lists several solutions. Credit: PTI

According to All India Survey of Higher Education reports, the growth in the number of students is up from 27.5 million in 2010 to 35.2 million in 2016. Credit: PTI

The problem of faculty shortages and large numbers of part-time faculty is nothing new. They have been there at least since the 1980s, whether due to financial, legal, technical/administrative or other reasons. However, faculty shortages have certainly become worse over time with the exponential growth – especially since the 2000s – in the number of higher education institutions and the college-going population which successive Indian governments did not adequately anticipate and prepare for. The numbers of institutions increased manifold in the 2000s, by about 1,000 colleges each year since 2003. Of course, several colleges, notably engineering and management institutions close down every year, but in sum, there has been a large increase in the total number of higher education institutions. Regarding the growth in the numbers of students, according to All India Survey of Higher Education (AISHE) reports, they have gone up from 27.5 million in 2010 to 35.2 million in 2016.

Not surprisingly, these days one reads about faculty shortages more often, usually every few months. And after every such report, government and university officials in particular express great dismay and make worried statements. Ministers and political leaders predictably call for action to hire more faculty. New strategies to find and hire faculty are announced. However, nothing much happens thereafter until the next time faculty shortages make the news and the cycle repeats itself.

With the gross enrolment ratio (GER) expected to increase from 25.2% (2016) to 30% (2020), the country’s colleges and universities will be spilling over more than ever before with students in the coming years. It is highly improbable that there will be sufficient numbers of faculty for these students in the coming future. Online courses and programmes will likely plug in some of the gaps but not by a whole lot, even though government officials and online education experts will claim otherwise.

But problems, such as faculty shortages and growing numbers of part-time faculty, are not merely old problems that have become worse over time; they are also not specific to public institutions. They are commonplace in private universities too, though for different reasons. The two reports mentioned at the beginning of this article do not bring up the problem of faculty shortages (and part-time faculty) at private institutions where a majority – 67% as of 2016 – of students are enrolled. Overall too, it is curious that much less is known and written about faculty shortages at private institutions even though many more students are enrolled there than at public institutions.

A rally by Delhi University Teachers Association in 2016 demanding filling up of vacant posts, among other things. Credit: DUTA website

It also needs to be underscored that there are different kinds or sources of faculty shortages. This is not something which is well understood. The commonly-interpreted meaning of faculty shortages is that it is about an inadequate supply/availability of sufficiently-qualified faculty at the level of the institution, the state, or the higher education sector overall. However, this is only the first kind of faculty shortage; there are four other ways to understand in order to appreciate the extent and scope of the problem. While there are more than occasional references to these other kinds of shortages, they are often collapsed to refer to the same thing.

It is true that the problem of faculty shortages overall is due to poor supply. Over the decades, the academic profession has been run into the ground by politicians, bureaucrats, academics themselves and the common people too. As a result, few hardworking and bright people take to academia and they are quite right in doing so. Most Indian universities are in such a broken state that they inspire young people to run away from them as soon as they are done with their education.

The second kind of faculty shortages come about due to the inability of many institutions to hire new faculty. This is common to government institutions. Public institutions – and particularly state universities and their constituent colleges which enrol the largest number of students among government institutions – do not hire new faculty because they are not adequately funded by the government. These universities commonly replace retirees – and there are growing numbers of them – with ad hoc faculty. Furthermore, salaries at these institutions remain below that recommended by the Sixth Pay Commission, and even then, in some states, teachers are only occasionally paid on time. Such conditions also drive away students who might have considered teaching as a career, thus adding to the first kind of shortage.

The third kind of shortages are those brought about by the unwillingness of institutions to hire faculty. This is common to private institutions whose strategy is to manage with less in order to maximise profits. Most private institutions prefer to hire larger numbers of ad hoc faculty as a matter of choice and complain about the shortage of suitably qualified faculty across all disciplines. There are genuine challenges in finding well-qualified faculty in some disciplines because of the high demand for them in industry and services, but the problem is specific to and more acute in some disciplines – such as computer science and business management –than in all. The shortages are made up in varying degrees or even exaggerated in order to save costs.

In some cases, public institutions too do not hire faculty willingly, even when they can. According to Vijay Kumar (not his real name), a retired bureaucrat and former secretary of education, several central universities advertise for faculty positions and do not hire faculty even when selection committees find qualified people with the reasoning that “X is far too qualified to join us” or “even if X joins us, she will leave us for greener pastures.” This lays down the groundwork for hiring less qualified people with the justification that they will accept the job and stay on. Kumar claimed that it is quite often the case that faculty positions at central universities are re-advertised in order to hire ‘one’s own’, whether fellow ethnics or those with Ph.Ds from the same institutions as key members of selection committees.

The fourth kind of shortage is one which comes about due to legal and related reasons. For example, faculty appointments are currently on hold at several higher education institutions in the wake of the decision by the Allahabad high court to strike down a prior University Grants Commission (UGC) circular prescribing institution-wise reservations to fill vacant faculty positions. This decision was upheld by the Supreme Court. The government has sought a review of this decision. Universities are waiting for the matter to be sorted out by the Supreme Court on July 2, before they go ahead with the process of making new appointments. Whatever comes of this issue, such legal hurdles have also contributed to the making of faculty shortages.

Finally, faculty shortages also occur due to the unwillingness or reluctance of faculty to work at select institutions due to their location or poor infrastructure. The shortages at many of the new central universities or the new IITs is because of their location. Universities in urban locations are less likely to suffer from such problems. Among other factors, spouses find is easier to find work in cities than in smaller urban centres. In one of the reports cited earlier, the vice-chancellor of a new university is quoted as follows:

“Location of the university is a problem, which is why we have a problem in getting faculty members. Who would want to come to such a remote location with their family?”

Remote locations lack employment opportunities for spouses, half-decent schools for children, and good medical care and are not attractive options for potential faculty.

It is fair to conclude that while the easy explanation for faculty shortages is the inadequate supply of qualified faculty, the truth is more complicated. But, irrespective of the kind of shortages in question, the time has come to accept that faculty shortages are now a permanent feature of India’s higher education sector. Just as we accept water and power shortages as routine and ubiquitous, we must accept that serious faculty shortages of one kind or the other will exist at Indian universities.

Pushkar is director of The International Centre Goa (ICG), Dona Paula. He tweets at @PushHigherEd. The views expressed here are personal.

*Also see “The Faculty Shortages in Universities is More Than a Quantitative Problem,” August 28, 2016; and “From Patna to Panaji, No One’s Taking University Faculty Shortages Seriously,” December 26, 2017.

Only 29 of 47 Central Universities Have Websites in Hindi, Study Reveals

The study claims in the last 100 years, not much has been done for the translation of the ordinances and Acts of central universities in Indian languages.

The study claims that in the last 100 years, not much has been done for the translation of the ordinances and Acts of central universities in Indian languages.

Banaras Hindu University is a public central university located in Varanasi, Uttar Pradesh. Credit: BHU website

Banaras Hindu University is a public central university located in Varanasi, Uttar Pradesh. Credit: BHU website

New Delhi: A study of the websites of the universities established since 1921 has revealed that hardly any of them had originally prepared their ordinances and Acts in Hindi. In fact, the study by researchers Sagarika Badu and Bharat Tiwari, has also established that out of 47 central universities, 46 had prepared their websites but only 29 of them had done so in Hindi. Most of the websites carried translated contents from their English editions.

The study stated that “there is a complete lack of originality in their Hindi editions” and that Hindi appeared to be “merely a language of translation” since “they have adopted Hindi just to fulfill their constitutional formalities”. It also pointed out that the situation in the universities of India’s southern states was much better than the universities in other parts of the country.

Tamil Nadu university shows the way in translating all ordinances into Hindi

Among the southern states, the study said, “Tamil Nadu is generally perceived as a Hindi-baiter state. But the university related to marine science there has got 100% of its ordinances translated into Hindi”. It stated, “The Central University of Karnataka has 50% of its ordinances translated into Hindi.”

Meanwhile, in Uttar Pradesh, the Central Agriculture University is the only institution which has all of its ordinances translated into Hindi, the study revealed.

The study claimed that in the last 100 years, not much has been done for the translation of the ordinances and Acts of central universities in Hindi and Indian languages. It also noted that out of these universities, Rajiv Gandhi National Aviation University was the only one that did not have its own website.

Eleven universities have translated ordinances, eight have translated Acts into Hindi

The study observed that while the number of universities having ordinances fully or partly translated to Hindi stood at 11, those that had their Acts fully or partly translated to Hindi numbered eight.

The Hindi translation of ordinances and Acts of just three universities was found on their respective websites, the study said,but only to “satisfy the constitutional need of the departments of the government”.

On the importance of the study, chairman of Media Studies Group, Anil Chamadia, insisted that the foundation of an institution depended upon the process of its formation and operation. In this context, he said that Indian universities were found to be “miserable” because the Acts related to their establishment and the ordinances issued by them were not available in Indian languages.

‘Constitutional obligation not being fulfilled by all’

While ordinances are important as a medium of communication since they are the rules and procedures prepared by a university regarding the commencement of new courses and admissions, Chamadia said, the universities, by not issuing them or translating them in Hindi, had not even bothered to fulfill their constitutional obligations.

Among the better performers were the Gurughasi Das University of Chhattisgarh and Himachal Pradesh Central University that had presented 50% and 26% of its ordinances in Hindi respectively.

Even Hindi universities were found lacking in this aspect. The Wardha-based Mahatma Gandhi International Hindi University had issued only around 50% of its ordinances in Hindi. The Varanasi-based Banaras Hindu University, established way back in 1916, also does not have its Acts available in Hindi yet.

Jamia Millia Islamia University in Delhi has its Acts and ordinances prepared in Hindi. Credit; PTI

Jamia Millia Islamia University in Delhi has its Acts and ordinances prepared in Hindi. Credit: PTI

Only three universities had prepared Acts originally in Hindi

Only three universities had prepared their Acts and ordinances in Hindi originally. They are the Sikkim University, Nalanda University – which is associated with the Ministry of External Affairs – and Jamia Millia Islamia in Delhi. Besides, the Acts of central universities of Rajasthan and Himachal Pradesh have also been translated into Hindi while those of universities based in Jharkhand and Karnataka have been partially translated into Hindi.

Nalanda and Sikkim are the two universities where both the ordinances and Acts are available in Hindi.

Budget 2017 Extends India’s Streak of Poor Spending on Research

Scientists think there is a mismatch between the government’s rhetoric on bettering India’s research output and how much it is willing to spend for the cause.

Scientists think there is a mismatch between the government’s rhetoric on bettering India’s research output and how much it is willing to spend for the cause.

An area of concern is the tendency to not view science education and research from a comprehensive, holistic perspective, which reflects in funding allocations. Above: Jantar Mantar, New Delhi. Credit: Terry Presley/Flickr, CC BY 2.0

An area of concern is the tendency to not view science education and research from a comprehensive, holistic perspective, which reflects in funding allocations. Above: Jantar Mantar, New Delhi. Credit: Terry Presley/Flickr, CC BY 2.0

Finance Minister Arun Jaitley’s latest budget has evoked mixed reactions from scientists on the very fundamental question of support for basic research. Barely a month ago, on January 3, Prime Minister Narendra Modi vowed at the Indian Science Congress at Tirupati that, by 2022, India would be a major global scientific power. In real terms it would require, at the least, upping India’s science allocations. For over a decade, they have been stagnant at 0.8% of its gross domestic product (GDP) despite oft-repeated announcements to hike it to 2%.

The key ministries and departments engaged in scientific research – the Ministry of Science and Technology, the Department of Atomic Energy (DAE), the Department of Space and the Department of Earth Sciences together received Rs 34,759.77 crore, or only an 11% increase. After factoring an inflation rate of 5.6%, the hike is effectively worth only 6%.

The Ministry of Science and Technology has three component departments: the Department of Science & Technology (DST), the Department of Biotechnology (DBT) and the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research. The DBT received Rs 2,222.11 crore, a relatively decent hike of 22% that will help it continue with its ambitious national biotech strategy, announced on December 31, 2015, which aims to replicate the country’s success in the IT sector in the biotech sector, and increase turnover from the sector to $100 billion by 2025 from $7 billion in 2016.

The space department, which will aim for the Moon for a second time in 2018, got Rs 9,093.71, a 21% hike. But the Ministry of Earth Sciences, which is engaged in climate-change research, received only Rs 9,093.71 crore, a paltry hike of 2.8%. The DAE received Rs 12,461.2 crores, a hike of 6.6%; and the DST, Rs 4,817.27 crore, a hike of 7.7%.

“Such announcements from the highest quarter constantly give hope to scientists, about possible increased allocation to S&T sectors. However, when the budget allocation comes, every year scientists get disillusioned as we get to know the actual distributions,” Krishna Ganesh, director of the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research (IISER), Pune, told The Wire.

On the other hand, DST secretary Ashutosh Sharma said he was not disappointed because his department received substantial hikes in the last two budgets and which helped it launch 16 new initiatives. And he believed the current allocation would let the department continue with them. DBT secretary K. VijayRaghavan also expects that this year’s allocation will help continue implementing the department’s national biotech strategy.

Implications for research

Then again, notwithstanding the hike for the department itself, the country’s biotech industry is not enthused. “So far nothing path breaking to suggest bold budget,” tweeted Kiran Mazumdar Shaw, managing director of Bengaluru-based Biocon, Ltd. Utkarsh Palnitkar, head of the life sciences division at KPMG India, agreed, adding that the sector had received no specific impetus as such.

Scientists are also divided over what the current science funding means for India’s basic science research.

For one, VijayRaghavan said that “it is upto the individual departments to prioritise their basic research” with the funds they receive. Joining him is Sri Krishna Joshi, an emeritus scientist at the National Physical Laboratory, New Delhi, and the former director general of the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), who thinks it is pointless doing “just basic research of mediocre kind, and not backing it with applied, developmental focus. We need to have a balanced view of fundamental research and development.” He also thinks that the latest allocations have been rightly divided between departments depending on whether or not they’ve showed results.

Others, however, strongly disagree. Ganesh points out that, in the last five or ten years, India has expanded its number of scientific institutes, as well as its pool of talented young scientists, thanks to the establishment of more IITs, IISERs, central universities, NITs and IIITs, under the Ministry of Human Resources Development, points out Ganesh. The addition of about 1,000 talented, young, foreign-trained scientists to the nation’s pool “has opened up opportunity for India to join higher league of nations in advanced basic sciences and research. However this dream remains elusive when we look at our budget allocations for higher education and S&T every year.”

Ganesh also observes that, while the IITs have received a big boost – up from Rs 4,953 crores in 2016-2017 to Rs 7,171 crores in 2017-2018 – “there is negligible enhancement in budget for science IISERs, Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bengaluru, and central universities that produce the majority of quality basic research.”

Also read: IITs and NITs gobble up 87% of hike in higher education budget

Gautam Desiraju, a professor of chemistry at IISc, says, “In any model anywhere in the world, the best research comes from educational institutions such as the universities. But it is not so in India. Our universities are lagging behind. We cannot rely just on central universities, IITs and IISERs.”

And while the IITs have received a boost, the IISERs have not. “Funding is actually negative for IISERs, down from Rs 720 crore [in 2016] to Rs 600 crore this year, including an additional IISER at Behrampur,” says Ganesh, who describes the cut as being “unfair”. “It is distressing for scientists in India. As such, the per capita expenses on Indian scientist is very low in global terms – the total S&T budget of the DST is less than that of Stanford University. Despite this, Indian scientists have continued to do well globally in terms of scientific output.”

No clear ideas

India’s R&D budget, excluding space and atomic energy, “is not increasing proportionately anywhere near the number of scientists that we have added to the nation’s pool,” he adds.

Another area of concern is the tendency to not view science education and research from a comprehensive, holistic perspective, which reflects in funding allocations. “Aggravating the problem is the tendency of the University Grants Commission to leave out state universities in its reforms agenda, whereas India cannot afford to neglect its state universities,” says Desiraju. “India is too big a country and there are too many researchers in state universities who are neglected.”

“The complete de-linking of science and technology with human resource development is not appropriate. Science and education are intimately connected and a sound education in science builds the base for further higher education and research in science.”

Scientists are also concerned over the impact of stagnating funds. “The current mechanism does not help tap the creative genius of individual researchers, because it is not swift, the velocity of funding is miserable and committees are unable to sift the grain from the chaff.” Desiraju also bemoans that “too many of the same people sit in all committees leading to burnout and lack of clear ideas.”

Joshi, however, points out that poor-quality leadership is as much a bane of state universities as poor funding. “Even if you pump in money in some state universities, their leadership is so awful that it will be of no use.”

What the country needs is a minimum and additional Rs 2,500 crore per annum (excluding all other establishment costs) across different science departments, according to Ganesh. “This is such a small amount in the country’s macroeconomics. With this amount, investment in any other sector would not fetch a proportionately greater dividend, output, recognition and a global Indian impact.”