UGC proposes to open faculty positions to serving and retired professionals

Currently, under the UGC minimum qualifications for appointment of teachers and other academic staff, one needs a PhD to get recruited as a professor or associate professor.

“There was a consensus in the meeting that the regulations are too restrictive. Once these are amended, professionals who have retired excelling and developing expertise in various fields, ranging from diplomatic services or the media for example, can join as faculty members. Even serving professionals can join and for that a separate category will be introduced,” Kumar said.

For retired professionals, two new posts – professor of practice and associate professor of practice – are proposed to be created while the prefix “visiting” will be applicable in the case of serving professionals.

The UGC is also mulling a central integrated portal for teacher recruitment, Kumar said. The portal will be the central database for all vacancies in teaching posts in the central universities and act as a bridge between applicants and the institutions.

“Applicants who sign up will have to create their profiles with details like their academic records. It will essentially be their CV. Once they decide to apply for a certain advertised position, they will just have to indicate that and the application form will get automatically transferred to the prospective employer,” Kumar said.

According to information shared by the government in Parliament in February, as many as 6,535 of 19,349 sanctioned faculty posts in 46 central universities remain vacant. Delhi University has the most number of vacancies with 859, followed by 611 in University of Allahabad, 499 in Banaras Hindu University and 359 in Aligarh Muslim University.

The integrated portal will help the UGC keep track of the vacancies and the status of applications for each post, Kumar said.