Over 33% Teaching Faculty Posts Lying Vacant in Central Universities, Shows Govt Data

New Delhi: Over 33% of faculty posts in Central universities are vacant, according to data presented in the Lok Sabha by Annapurna Devi, Minister of State in the Ministry of Education on Monday, December 20. As per the data, of the 18,905 sanctioned faculty posts in the Central universities, 6,333 were vacant as of October 1, 2021.

Of the sanctioned 2,544 posts for professors, only 1,072, that is, 42% of the posts were filled. Of the 5,098 sanctioned posts for associate professors, only 2,702, that is, 53% of the posts were filled. The situation is slightly better for assistant professors, where out of 11,263 sanctioned posts, 12,572, that is 78%, are filled.

The Minister gave this information to the House while answering a question on whether the government is facing a shortage of teachers. “The UGC has further informed that to maintain the quality of education and to cover up the shortage of teachers, Central Universities are adopting different methods, which inter alia, include hiring ad-hoc faculty, Guest Faculty, Contract Faculty and Re-employed Faculty,” she said in a written reply.

Devi added, “The UGC has also framed the guidelines for empanelment of Adjunct-Faculty in Universities and Colleges which enable Higher Educational Institutions to access the eminent teachers and researchers, who have completed their formal association with University / College, to participate in teaching, to collaborate and to stimulate research activities for quality research at M.Phil. and Ph. D. levels.”

According to government data, there are currently 48 Central universities in the country. The number of students in these universities is 7,20,025.

However, there is a major discrepancy in the government data about the number of teachers. The data presented in the All India Survey on Higher Education (AISHE) 2019-2020, there are 20,815 teachers employed, but the data does not specify whether or not it includes ad-hoc, guest, contract, and re-employed faculty.

In September 2021, Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan had given the Central universities a two-month deadline to fill up the 6,000 plus vacancies. “Let us work on a mission mode. During Shikshat Parv [Education Festival], let us start a campaign, a mission to fill up these 6,000 seats within September and October,” he had said in his first interaction with the Vice-Chancellors of 45 Central universities. He had added that while there may be a few anomalies at some universities, all institutions should advertise their vacant posts by September 10.

Vice-Chancellors who had participated in the meeting said there was a special focus on backlog vacancies — positions which have not been filled despite having been advertised — as well as on vacant positions which have been reserved for Scheduled Caste, Scheduled Tribe and Other Backward Class communities. Out of 6,229 vacant positions, 1,767 were for the OBC category, 1,012 for the SCs and 592 for the STs, Pradhan had said.

However, while answering the question in Lok Sabha on Monday, the Minister of State failed to mention whether the universities had followed the direction, and were actually filling the vacant posts. The data presented was from October 1, and there is no way to know whether the universities had acted on the order. The data just shows that the number of vacancies saw a slight increase between the Minister’s order and October 1, instead of decreasing.

Earlier, on December 15,  Pradhan had told Parliament that over 10,000 faculty positions were vacant across Central universities, Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) and Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs). Of the total 10,814 vacancies, 6,535 are in central universities including IGNOU, 403 are in IIMs and 3,876 are in IITs, the minister said in a written reply to the Rajya Sabha.

When asked whether the government had any plans to give more concessions in eligibility-related norms for appointments in the universities, the Minister of State said that the appointments are done by the universities as per the University Grants Commission guidelines.