The UGC regulations on minimum qualifications for appointment of teachers and maintaining minimum standards stand gazetted as on July 18. These regulations specify norms and apply uniformly for all 864 universities, 11619 standalone institutions and 40,026 colleges in the country. The earlier regulation on the same issue were notified as the UGC Regulation 2010 but covered under its provisions with retrospective effect all promotion and career advancement cases after 31st December 2008.
The new 2018 regulations supersedes the earlier one together with all its amendments, but unlike the former comes into effect from date of notification however grants benefit to teachers by implementing revision of pay from January 1, 2016.
The former UGC Regulations 2010 were amended on four different occasions with contents quite contradictory, causing more pain and uncertainty each time. The 2018 regulation addresses most of these concerns and is deservingly welcomed.
The new norms lower the minimum criteria for assured promotions of teachers. The minimum working hours have been kept steady at five putting an end to the woes of college teachers. The new norms for the first time discusses an elaborate scoring pattern for short-listing candidates for interview with due weights for marks scored at graduation, post graduation, publications, experience etc and the candidates with PhD are exempted from the condition of eligibility.
The earlier 10 percent ceiling for promotion of Associate Professors to Professors is done away with but the requirement of publication has been increased from five to ten.
The new norms are charged with diluting the entry level eligibility and promotion criteria for colleges creating new disparity and disaccord with university teachers. The minimum qualifications for recruitment of teachers at university and college level should ideally have remained the same as per the earlier norms and should not be enhanced to require Ph.D at the entry level. The disparity will unnecessarily create hierarchy between universities and colleges.
Increasing qualifications will not only delay entry into the profession but also makes it difficult for candidates without financial
support fail to do Ph.D as it necessitates further 4-5 years of study. For recruitment of Assistant Professor in Education for example requires 3 years of graduation (at age of 20), further 2 years to acquire graduation in education plus 2 years of post graduation and a 4-5 years of PhD comes to 12 years after Std XII forcing candidate to apply only at the age of 28. This is discouraging. Also raising the qualifications may create hurdles for many universities already facing shortage of faculty in hiring teachers.
For instance, in India a total of 12 central universities out of 40 has more than 75 percent vacancy of professors. In all 40 central universities around 33.14 percent lay vacant. Further universities and colleges loose the freedom to screening candidates based on eligibility requirements and now forced to pre-evaluate candidates based on matrix of faulty weights.
Those candidates from disadvantaged backgrounds, who don’t perform well in their graduation and post graduation later but catch up might be affected by the new norms. The new norms reveal that the weightage of scores given to post graduation is equal to that with PhD. This is absurd. A candidate with 80% marks in post graduation stands to get 25 weightage points, while a candidate with PhD degree gets the same 25 points when
applying for an Assistant Professor’s post in a college.
Since PhD becomes mandatory for appointment/promotion to the post of Associate Professor there will be a sudden surge in the number of students desiring enrolment. Goa University through recent amendments have made it difficult for colleges to apply for Research Centres and the existing ones will also be deprived, the tweaked criteria being difficult to achieve. Further since the time taken for completion of MPhil/PhD will not be considered as experience while determining promotions as per new norms, this will discourage in-service teachers taking FIP/Study Leave benefit.
The greatest flaw in the new norms is that now publications by any faculty in “Peer review journals” will equate publications in “UGC listed Journals”. The UGC on three different occasions has pruned the list of approved journals to remove the predatory and sub-standard ones. The updated list is though not full-proof has at least made an earnest attempt to push teachers to publish in quality journals. Since the new norms do not define what constitutes in so called “Peer reviewed journals”, publications made in all ‘pay and publish-type journals’ with a printed line ‘Peer-reviewed’ will
pass through.
Our API system differs from that by which researchers’ work is evaluated in the U.K. and known as the Research Excellence Framework, in which the quality of the work is judged by a peer-review committee rather than the journals in which papers are published. Publication in a good quality journal sometimes takes 2-3 years whereas as one may simply Google ‘peer reviewed journal’ will easily find easy invitations from publishers promising to publish in 1-2 days on payment of fees.
Thus the publications only as per the UGC listed or those indexed in Web of Science, Scopus and Indian Citation Index are only ought to be considered by new norms. Director of Higher Education in Goa Govt. could press for this change.
Goa University has to be lauded for having taken quick strides in incorporating the new norms in its statutes but since the state government has powers to adapt the norms as per its requirements it would be fit if the authorities show courage to set the bar a little high than what is specified in the “Minimum Eligibility” requirements. After all the hallmark of ‘quality’ is performance beyond minimum stipulated norms.
