India's public education subsists on ad hocism

The lack of permanent faculty posts doesn’t just hamper students.It also saps young teachers of enthusiasm and faith in the profession

For the past five years, Shivraj Bhosale has been working as a guest lecturer in Mumbai, juggling five colleges, for which he gets paid Rs 35,000 per month — a fraction of what a permanent teacher earns. Bhosale, who has a Masters in Political Science, gets paid by the number of lectures he delivers to college students.

Almost two decades back, Mandar Talvekar hoped to make a career out of his passion for teaching. He had cleared the State Eligibility Test even before he secured his Masters degree and later enrolled for a PhD programme in English literature. For two years, he worked as a part-time teacher in a couple of colleges, but chose to switch to a career in the corporate sector.

Susheel Jadhav in Hubballi worked as a guest lecturer for nine years, hoping that his work would be acknowledged one day, before moving on. “I felt frustrated and disrespected,” he told DH. “We would sometimes not be paid for seven months. Then after a strike and a lot of struggle, we would finally be paid. Timings were not flexible and we wouldn’t even have a say in anything.”

India has the third largest higher education sector after the US and China, with increasing enrollments in higher education courses. But it also faces a unique problem — huge vacancies in the permanent teaching positions in these higher education institutes.

As of April this year, India’s central universities, including the Indira Gandhi National Open University, had almost a third of their sanctioned posts unfilled: 6,319 teachers posts were vacant as against the sanctioned strength of 19,356.

A similar situation persists in colleges affiliated to universities and state varsities. Given this shortage of teaching faculty, most universities have been resorting to ad-hoc arrangements — hiring teachers on short-term contracts or guest-lecturers who are paid based on the number of hours they teach.

Harshavardhan Sheelavant, former Syndicate member, Karnatak University, Dharwad said state universities have found a “mediocre way of doing things” by hiring guest faculty, who effectively run most college departments, leaving the permanent staff to do mundane tasks like draw up college time tables.

He said the effects of this practice on students are wide-ranging.

Lack of permanent appointments can limit the courses students can study, particularly in the humanities and the social sciences; dearth of permanent faculty also hampers prospects of students who want to take up research.

Also read: Blame the tedious process of recruitment: Experts on shortage of teaching staff

"We also need someone who can invest time in students and see what kind of training they need. This is totally absent," Sheelavant told DH.

“We have plans without provisions,” said Dinesh Kumar, Associate Professor at V G Vaze College, a Mumbai-based autonomous institution.

He blamed the lack of funds as the prime reason for vacancies and the prevalence of contract teachers, which in the long run affects both the individual and the institution alike.

Contractual teachers or 'ad hocs' are hired for anywhere between four months to a year at a fraction of the salary of permanent teachers and without any benefits such as that of seniority, leave, in-service training.

“The practice of ad hoc teachers affects the career progression of the teachers. With teachers struggling to make ends meet, they find very little time to pursue research,” Kumar told DH.

Hampers growth

Absence of full-time teachers also affects the growth of an educational institute which may start off as an undergraduate college and may aspire to be a research institute over a period of time, he said.

The situation is no different in Karnataka, where about 40 per cent permanent staff posts in colleges are vacant.

“About 14,000 guest lecturers work in colleges in Karnataka and about 2,000 in universities. At least 4,000 of them have either cleared NET, SET or have an MPhil or a PhD. Some have been working in the same role for more than nine years in the hope that they will be recruited full time in a university,” said Raghu Akamanchi, President of Karnataka Rajya Mahavidyalaya Shikshak Sangha.

At a time when a vast number of teaching positions are lying vacant in Andhra Pradesh's universities, a recruitment process to fill up over 1,100 assistant professor posts has been pending for over three years now.

A notification to recruit entry-level teachers in the 14 state universities was issued in 2018.

However, a tangle over the implementation of reservation — whether it should be implemented at the university level or departmental level and objections over the rationalisation of posts have stalled the process.

The matter of reservation is presently in the Andhra Pradesh High Court.

Corruption

In contrast to other states, vacancies are not much of an issue in Tamil Nadu, which has 22 state-run universities and one central university.

“Since universities enjoy a fair amount of autonomy, the vice-chancellors keep filling the vacancies whenever there is a need,” Balamurugan, General Secretary of Association of University Teachers told DH.

But the state’s universities have had a chequered history. Two former vice-chancellors of Anna University and Tamil Nadu Dr Ambedkar Law University have been booked on serious graft charges.

The filling of vacancies by the VCs has led to huge-scale corruption in the recruitment process, Balamurugan said.

“Every university in Tamil Nadu faces a slew of corruption allegations on recruitment of teaching staff. This is the biggest problem that the universities in the state are facing today,” he said.

While the universities in Kerala, including the Central University at Kasargod, were taking measures to fill the existing vacancies, those working in the field blame it on changing UGC (University Grants Commission) norms as well as government policies.

The UGC had changed norms for recruiting teachers in 2018 with more weightage for scores in interview for selection.

Alleging that this paves the way for nepotism in selection of faculty to universities, Save Education Campaign Committee in Kerala is planning to move the court.

Faced with shortage of teachers, Maharashtra’s Higher and Technical Education Minister Uday Samant recently held a review meeting with NET-SET qualified teachers, where it was decided to recruit 3,064 professors in the state.

“Till now, of the total approved 4,074 recruitment posts of professors, 1,600 posts have been filled. Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, the recruitment process was put on hold, but now the proposal for the recruitment of 3,064 professors has been sent to the Finance Department,” Samant said.

The situation is a tad better at Delhi University. The ad-hoc teachers there get Rs 89,000 per month, equivalent to the salary of an assistant professor, but the similarity ends there. Ad-hoc teachers are not entitled to leaves, training or research opportunities and some are expected to renew their contracts every four months.

“You cannot plan your private or academic life at all,” Rajib Ray, President of the Delhi University Teachers Association told DH.

According to Ray, the government should make a grand one-time gesture to absorb ad-hoc teachers in permanent positions and put an end to the uncertainty plaguing their lives.

Those in academic circles had pinned their hopes on the National Education Policy (NEP) released last year.

The policy recognised teachers as “the heart of the learning process” and stressed on the need for “recruitment, continuous professional development, positive working environment and service conditions”. But the NEP stops short of explaining the terms of recruitment and service conditions, leaving it open for interpretation. It is also silent on discontinuing the practice of hiring contract teachers.

M M Pallam Raju, who served as HRD Minister in the Manmohan Singh government, wondered why the private universities did not face issues such as shortages in teaching staff.

Raju said several successful professionals were interested in teaching courses at universities. “They are not interested in tenured positions, but keen to share their experience with the students,” the former minister told DH.

“The challenge before the new Education Minister would be to define better criteria to allow seamless movement from industry to academia,” Raju added.

For now, the trend seems to be the other way around. While Mandar made a quick decision and moved to the corporate sector almost a generation ago, Shivraj is still pursuing teaching. But even he is keeping an eye on avenues elsewhere.

(With inputs from Varsha Gowda in Bengaluru, Mrityunjay Bose in Mumbai, Arjun Raghunath in Thiruvananthapuram, E T B Sivapriyan in Chennai and Prasad Nichenametla in Hyderabad)