Indian higher education: 40% of college teachers temporary

There are four members in the economics faculty of Khaira College near Balasore in Odisha. Two of them get salaries of over Rs 1 lakh, one gets around Rs 45,000 and the fourth just Rs 11,139. All of them take 30 to 33 lectures a month. Although a UGC-recognized college, only the two top-earners get UGC prescribed pay scales. One is getting the state scale, and the lowest earning lecturer is under a contract covered by a 'block grant'. In many other Odisha colleges, there are lecturers working for as little as Rs 5,000 per month, says Pravas Chandra Mohapatra, a professor at Khaira. This story is repeated across the country. Colleges and universities are not appointing teachers on regular posts. Instead they hire non-regular or contractual teachers at a pittance, many of whom are not fully qualified. It is an unacknowledged crisis swamping the higher education system in India, which otherwise tom-toms its rapid expansion. Neither the department of higher education nor the University Grants Commission (UGC) has a complete picture about vacancies in universities and colleges, and the contractual non-regular teachers appointed to tide over these vacancies. A parliamentary standing committee in its report in May this year recorded only partial figures. Against 16,324 sanctioned teaching posts in central universities, 6,254 posts — 38% — were vacant. Information for only 47 state universities (out of a total of 297) was available showing that out of 11,645 sanctioned posts, 4,710 or 40% posts were lying vacant. "A critical patient has to be given emergency treatment under close monitoring," the standing committee wrote in anguish. TOI collected information on pay scales of contractual teachers and their numbers from regional teachers' associations and federations across the country. The findings are shocking, and indicate a crumbling higher education setup in the country. An estimated 40% of college teachers are non-regular, designated variously as temporary, contractual, ad hoc, guest or self-financing. They usually get anything between Rs 4,000 and Rs 20,000 per month, and work for about six months in a year on contractual basis. They get no other benefits. If university and college teachers are being paid such low salaries, and with many not even fully qualified, to expect good quality teaching from them is unreasonable, says Vijendra Sharma, former president of Delhi University Teachers' Association. Even Ved Prakash, chairman of the powerful UGC that controls the purse strings of higher education in India, admits that "some sub-standard" teachers have been roped in at the college level, although he insists that measures are being taken to appoint qualified faculty. In the Mother Teresa Women's University, Dindigul, Tamil Nadu, one of the constituent colleges pays just Rs 4,000 per month to many of its lecturers. Manoharan, who retired after 33 years of teaching English at a Dindigul college, says you can find colleges paying Rs 2,000 to 2,500 in the district. He estimates that about 40% of teachers in southern states are non-regular. In Manipur University, run by the central government, so called part-time or guest lecturers — numbering some 600 out of total faculty of about 1,600 — were being paid Rs 8,000 per month according to Laishram Randhoni Devi, president of the teachers association. She says about a third of faculty in the north-eastern colleges is contractual. Tapati Mukhopadhyaya, general secretary of western zone federation of teachers and recently retired from Mumbai University, says that the going rate for ad hoc teachers is Rs 8,000-10,000 in Maharashtra, although it may vary with colleges. She said that in Maharashtra, Gujarat, AP and Goa, about 40% teachers are temporary. In the northern states of Punjab, Haryana, HP and J&K, the salaries of these non-regular teachers are between Rs 6,000 and Rs 15,000, says Attar Singh, a professor of physics in Hissar. In these states, Singh says, proportion of non-regular teachers varies between 40-60%. Asok Barman, general secretary of the All-India Federation of University and College Teachers, says that while student intake has rapidly grown, a resource crunch, especially with state governments, has led to over 40% of regular teaching posts being filled up by low-paid contractual teachers. "Instead of filling up these vacancies, colleges and universities appoint non-regular teachers at a quarter of the salary for regular teachers. In private colleges in remote areas, fresh post graduates are paid peanuts to teach under-graduate classes," Barman says. "We are aware of the faculty shortages and we are trying to fill vacancies with well qualified teachers through various initiatives like faculty recharge program, appointment of non-NET qualified scholars, etc. A centrally sponsored scheme - Rashtriya Uchhatar Shiksha Abhiyan (RUSA) costing Rs 25,000 crore has been launched with matching grants from states," Ved Prakash explains. In private universities, teachers report that there is hardly any monitoring, and arbitrary salaries are paid. The parliamentary committee noted that just 53 private universities have been visited by the UGC expert committees since 2004, and just 8 had completed their compliance actions. Ved Prakash agrees that "not all private universities have turned out to be good". UGC was going to concentrate on monitoring in the coming days, he said. TOI