The Hindu : National : Panel suggests steps to meet faculty shortage

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Wednesday, Jul 12, 2006

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National

Panel suggests steps to meet faculty shortage

Special Correspondent

Hiring retired faculty on contract

NEW DELHI: With faculty shortage already the bane of the Indian education set-up, the Oversight Committee — entrusted with the task of monitoring the implementation of 27 per cent reservation for Other Backward Classes (OBCs) in central educational institutions — would like Indian faculty to reinvent itself to meet the challenges ahead.

In particular, it wants to do away with the prevalent practise of recruiting alumni as teachers. Describing this trend as "academic incest," the Committee — in its theme paper for consultations — noted that this "is leading to a stultifying atmosphere of limited intellectual interaction and undermining fresh thinking, new ideas and innovative research."

Advocating "cross-fertilisation of ideas" in institutions of higher learning, the Committee pointed out that all great universities of the world have an inflexible policy of recruiting only alumni of other universities into the faculty. Noting that this was the pattern in India, too, in the earlier decades, the Committee notes with concern that over the last three decades, "increasingly faculty is drawn largely from among the alumni of the same university." As part of the effort to rejuvenate Indian universities in the larger exercise to build a knowledge society, "we need to adopt the global best practices in recruitment."

To address the problem of faculty shortage, the Committee has suggested hiring retired faculty on a contractual basis and giving them limited tenures, and allowing faculty close to retirement to continue in teaching without occupying their substantial position. "While thinking of innovative approaches, the fact has to be kept in mind that the core compensation package of academic staff should not be altered so that the existing parities are not disturbed. In any case, a great deal of flexibility regarding non-monetary and monetary incentives linked to additional deliverables would be required," it notes.

Also, according to the Committee, mere teaching without research is sterile. It would like an analysis of the research capacity in these institutions.

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