HRD min recommends new scheme to attract faculty

With shortage of teachers in higher education institutions being over 50 %, a HRD ministry committee has suggested a new scheme providing financial incentives to students in colleges and universities to join as faculty after completion of their education. Chetan Chauhan reports.

Updated on: Aug 9, 2011, 19:41:06 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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With shortage of teachers in higher education institutions being over 50 %, a HRD ministry committee has suggested a new scheme providing financial incentives to students in colleges and universities to join as faculty after completion of their education.

A scheme called Academic Career Assistantship Program to provide financial assistance to students and ensure employment in an academic institution after graduation should be introduced, said the committee headed by Sanjay Dande, Director of Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Kanpur.

The ministry had constituted the committee in 2009 to gauge the amount of teacher shortage and recommend remedial measures. “The present shortage of 3.8 lakh teachers of faculty members in the higher education comes to over 50 % which is critical…it is likely to grow to 13 lakhs in the next eight to 10 years,” the committee said.

The major reasons for faculty shortfall was massive expansion of higher education, poor supply of qualified teachers, ban on recruitment by most institutions, lack of flexibility and absence of quality consciousness among a large number of applications.

To overcome some of these challenges, the committee had recommended a scheme to attract faculty at a young age of 20-21 as in case of military and medical practice.

After graduation, a person should be selected by an academic institution as prospective faculty and by another as post-graduate student. “This selection will provide the student the status of a faculty in-waiting and will provide financial support of Rs 5,400 per month,” the committee has suggested.

Instead of normal two year course, the student will be registered for a three year post graduate course. At end of the course, the student will be provided with a regular master’s degree as well as post graduate diploma in higher education. For this diploma, the student will have to work as a teaching assistant and will have to attend some courses on teaching methods and philosophy.

During the course period, the student will be required to clear the National Legibility Test (NET) so that he or she is qualified for appointment as faculty.

In case of students doing masters, the committee has suggested that they can join the doctoral programme for a period of four years. During this period, for the first year they should be provided with the financial support of Rs 5,400. From second year, they should get financial support of Rs 6,000 per month. At end of four years, they will receive post graduate diploma in higher education and a doctoral degree in their main subject.

After completion of their course, they will join the academic institution which had selected them at the beginning of the academic programme. “It is hoped that over a long period of 10-15 years, this scheme will start the impact both in terms of quantity as well as quality,” the committee observed.

The financial implication of the scheme is expected to be Rs 50 crore per annum.

The committee has also recommended slew of other reforms including allowing foreign faculty to bridge the meet the growing demand of teachers.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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