Quality matters, lecturers’ test to return

The Govt is all set to make it compulsory for teachers to pass the National Eligibility Test (NET) for jobs in higher education institutions, reports Chetan Chauhan.

Updated on: May 5, 2008, 02:05:06 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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Worried over reports of falling standards in higher education, the government is all set to make it compulsory for teachers to pass the National Eligibility Test (NET) for jobs in higher education institutions like state and central universities.

The test was a mandatory condition before it was relaxed in 2006. The new rule is unlikely to affect teachers appointed in higher education institutions in the interim period.

A committee headed by Planning Commission member B.N. Mungerkar has asked the government to reinforce NET as the national screening criterion for all appointments of lecturers.

In June 2006, the University Grants Commission had exempted Ph.D and M.Phil degree holders from the test on the basis of interim recommendations of the Mungerkar panel report.

The Mungerkar panel has now reversed its interim recommendations after consultations with academicians across the country.

The panel now says that the screening test is necessary to maintain high standard in teaching in higher education.

The committee feels that relaxing NET can jeopardize quality of education and the better way to attract good teachers for higher education was through better remuneration and incentives.

Academicians had protested the UGC's decision to implement the interim recommendations, saying that the country does not have a mechanism to ensure authenticity of PhD and MPhil degrees. But UGC had said that the NET condition was being relaxed to facilitate universities to fill up huge vacancies. Of the total 9,261 teaching posts in 24 central universities, about 21 per cent are vacant. In state universities, about 15 per cent posts are vacant.

According to UGC sources, the commission has in principle agreed with the committee's final recommendation.

UGC's member secretary RK Chauhan refused to comment on the contents of the report but said that the commission would consider Mungekar panel recommendations at its next meeting in June.

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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