It?s easy to slip out of NET

Never mind howls of protests from the academia, the University Grants Commission (UGC) has made the National Eligibility Test (NET) almost irrelevant in appointing teachers in colleges and universities with immediate effect.

Published on: Jun 14, 2006, 03:17:00 IST

None | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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Never mind howls of protests from the academia, the University Grants Commission (UGC) has made the National Eligibility Test (NET) almost irrelevant in appointing teachers in colleges and universities with immediate effect.

Under the new rules, Ph.D holders will not have to clear the NET to be eligible for teachers' posts in colleges and universities. The M.Phil holders will not require a NET qualification for a teaching job, except for post-graduate levels. Only Masters degree holders will require a NET seal for a teaching job at the undergraduate level.

The commission amended the regulations at its meeting on Sunday. "The changes will be in force from Monday and will be applicable for recruitment of teachers for the coming academic year," a senior UGC official told HT.

Asked about the rationale of the decision, the official said it was based on the recommendations of interim report of the B.L. Mungerkar committee forwarded by ministry of human resource development to the commission for consideration.

The committee, which is yet to submit its final report, had emphasised that a NET clearance should be a criterion for basic education and not for researchers.

Most academics disagree. D.P.S. Verma, who retired from Delhi School of Economics, term the UGC decision as disastrous. "NET was the only national level screening test to ensure quality of teachers in the country. In India, one can get a Ph.D or an M.Phil through dubious means. Appointment will become a new business in higher education," he said. Like Verma, many academics have written to the UGC opposing the move. Even within UGC, there is strong resistance to the move. "It will have an adverse impact on the quality of education," a senior official said.

In its defence, the UGC said a committee will be constituted to suggest ways to standardise and improve research.

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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