Appointment of VC: Can we change the system?

Guest Lecturer: Who is to be blamed?

Guest lecturers are enormous benefit to any educational institution or University. They allow for higher enrollments in an aided college helping them to get more money. They save the Government money. They are being paid less than the permanent faculty. If they do not perform well, they will simply not recruited in the next year.

At the same time, we cannot think of removing this problem. But, their terms, situations, conditions of employment must be adequate or improved. Their problem must be viewed as connected with many other aspects of higher education. The use of Guest Faculty has increased throughout the higher education system, not only in our country, but also in the west. In America, 64 per cent of community college faculty are guest faculty or part time faculty. The proportion of guest faculty is more in humanities, compared to other streams. They are being paid less salary, no research incentives, no evaluation and feedback, no API Scores, less access to professional development activities, less ability to engage in research, no involvement in the institutional governance, less job security, less information on professional expectations, no retirement benefits, less time to prepare to class due to other engagements, generally assigned less interesting subjects.

This cost cutting strategy of Government or aided college lessens job opportunities in the academic professions and lowers salaries for entering full time permanent and diminishes the quality of fresh recruits. It leads program incoherence and decreased faculty involvement and in the student learning. It hinders departments of qualified people needed to perform these important functions while overburdens permanent faculty members with additional work such as organsing the seminars, conferences, fests, even with tasks  of hiring, mentoring and supervising temporary faculty who are disconnected with these tasks. It created a sort of Brahmincal hierarchy, where the tenured faculty enjoys academic careers and compensation according to his qualification and degree, while those untouchables are treated poorly from semester to semester with no career prospects. 

Starting of Parents Relation Centre at Colleges: Both Government and Aided

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Appointment of Faculty:Whether University Autonomy Leads to Manipulation?

High Court quashes appointment made by Mangalore University

Mangaluru ,DEC 10, 2014, DHNS:

With the Karnataka High Court terming the appointment of an assistant professor by the Mangalore University as “illegal,” there is a ray of hope for more than half a dozen candidates, who have filed cases against the Mangalore university seeking justice in the recruitments done by the former Vice Chancellor Prof T C Shivashankar Murthy for various posts of professors, associate professors and assistant professors.
In a major set back to the Mangalore university, the High Court (Writ Petition 17475/2014) ruled that one of the applicants Srinath B S, who had applied for the post of assistant professor at the University’s Micro Biology department at the Post Graduate Centre at Chikka Aluvara in Kodagu district, should be appointed instead of Dr Gautham S A, who has been selected by the university.

The said post was reserved for rural category in the general merit category and Srinath was the only candidate under rural category who had applied for the post.

According to the notification, the post was reserved for rural category in general merit and the candidate should have secured 55 per cent marks in MSc in Micro Biology. In addition, the candidate should have passed either the National Eligibility Test (NET) or the State-level Eligibility Test (SLET).

Though Srinath was the only eligible candidate as per the notification (he had obtained 65.05 per cent marks and had passed SLET), the university had selected Goutham, who did not fulfil all the conditions laid down by the university notification for the said post.

Though the respondents in the said case (Mangalore university, Goutham and the Higher Education department) argued that Goutham was selected as he had a PhD and he secured more points than Srinath, the High Court ruled that Srinath was not only entitled, but deserved to be appointed to the post, as he had fulfilled all the conditions of the notification whereas Goutham did not apply under rural category (as per the reservation in the notification).

The High Court also noted that the notification by the university did not contain a condition of cut off marks for suitability of the candidate and such a condition can not be imposed in the midst of the selection process.

Appointment arbitrary

Meanwhile, a senior professor, who did not wish to be quoted, said that the judgement of the High  Court on the WP17475  clearly vindicated that most of the appointments made by former vice chancellor Prof T C Shivashankara Murthy, just on the verge of his relinquishing the office, were totally arbitrary, against the statutes, in violation of the UGC guidelines prescribed for filling the posts of the teaching faculty.

“The text of the judgement in unambiguous terms shows the wilful and deliberate manipulation made by the former vice chancellor to appoint his own chosen men,” he said and added that this clearly proves that the vice chancellor had made a mockery of the rules made by the UGC to prevent the elements of unfair, corrupt or nepotic consideration creeping into the selection process.”

Many more cases

It may be noted that many more such writ petitions are waiting on the doors of the Karnataka High Court, and the victims are eagerly waing for justice. Though the victims had approached the then Chancellor H R Bharadwaj, it did not yield any results.

However, with the present Chancellor Vajubhai Rudabhai Vala ordering probe into the irregularities in Karnataka University, the eligible candidates who reportedly failed to make it in the selection process due to alleged irregularities in the selection process of Mangalore University are waiting with a hope.

Karnataka: Deep rot

Higher education in the southern state of Karnataka (pop. 59 million) is in deep crisis. Over the past few months the state’s 18 government-controlled universities have been hit by a series of scandals — massive fiddling with written exam papers at the Rajiv Gandhi University of Health Sciences; corruption in recruiting non-teaching staff at the Hassan and Mysore medical colleges; and manipulation of exam answer sheets of over 800 engineering students of Visvesvaraya Technological University, among others. Now to this list of scandals add routine sexual harassment of students by faculty in Mysore University (MU, estb.1916). On March 5, the peace of the 739-acre main campus of MU was shattered following a suicide attempt by M. Saritha, a zoology Ph D student, because of allegedly constant sexual harassment by her research guide Prof. Shivabasavaiah. In a statement to the Mysore police, Saritha alleged that Prof. Shivabasavaiah had been harassing her for sexual favours for several months. She also alleged that when she comp-lained to vice chancellor Dr. V.G. Talwar, he advised her to “change her guide and continue with her research”. Subsequent to her FIR, Shivabasavaiah and Talwar were booked on sexual harassment and abetment charges with the state government also ordering an enquiry by chief secretary S.V. Ranganath. Unfortunately this is not a one-off incident. According to university authorities, 26 complaints of sexual impropriety against faculty have been registered in the past six years in this once prestigious university whose alumni include Dr. Sarvepalli Radha-krishnan, former president of India; N.R. Narayana Murthy, chief mentor of Infosys Technologies Ltd; and celebrated cartoonist R.K. Laxman. The rot in Mysore University is only one symptom of a deep malaise afflicting Karnataka’s 1,500 colleges and 18 universities. Over the past three decades caste-based faculty appointments, admission and exam-related scandals, nepotism and routine interference from the state’s rustic politicians have played havoc and severely damaged the reputations of government-controlled universities. In particular, persistent political interference with faculty appointments has resulted in the steady decline of teaching-learning standards and reduced state government funded universities including Bangalore, Mysore and Karnatak University at Dharwad into degree dispensing shops producing ill-prepared, low-calibre graduates and postgrads rubbished by India Inc. With rustic neo-literate politicians scrambling to pack state government funded colleges and universities with kith and kin equipped with dubious degrees including Ph Ds awarded by obscure universities deep in the state’s hinterland, it’s hardly surprising that academic excellence is history in most government institutions of higher learning with rock-bottom standards and fees, caste-consciousness, marks-tampering scandals and sexual harassment of women students. Unsurprisingly in the period 1998-2007, the state’s 18 universities enroled a mere 2,789 students in doctorate programmes with less than half of them being awarded Ph Ds of suspect quality. “There’s no doubt that there’s wide scale corruption, nepotism and sexism in Karnataka’s government colleges and universities. Over 50 percent of students who enrol in Ph D programmes drop out, unable to deal with these evils,” says Dr. B.K. Anitha, associate professor, School of Social Sciences at the National Institute of Advanced Studies, Bangalore. Prof. M.S. Thimmappa, former vice chancellor of Bangalore University, agrees that the main cause of the deep malaise afflicting higher education in the state is nepotism and rampant political interference with faculty appointments. “Political interference and nepotism have destroyed academic autonomy in higher education institutions in Karnataka. Merit has taken a back seat and the 22 percent reservation in faculty for SCs and STs is being misused to appoint under-qualified faculty. The government must immediately restore academic and administrative autonomy of universities and faculty appointments must be made transparent, merit-based and performance-linked,” says Thimmappa. Yet given that successive governments elected on the basis of complicated caste calculations and alliances have subsumed and suborned Karnataka’s once-reputed public institutions of higher learning, expecting government — especially the incumbent scandal-per-day BJP government — to stem the rot is asking for the moon. Swati Roy (Bangalore)

Decrease in the Retirement Age - 60 to 58: Is it viable?

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In many industrialised countries, the average age of retirement from employment has decreased over the last 30 years in spite of better health facilities and increase in the expectation of life. Many countries and corporations have introduced avenues for early retirement within their pension systems.

India has to create job opportunities to younger generations. It is argued that the old have failed to change according to changes in technology, productivity and expectations of reduced cost per person. It is argued that reduction in retirement age will downsize the unit, it is preferred route of improving the efficiency, it will help the sectors like education and universities a lot, as most of the Universities are in trouble, it will have profound effect on the way organizations work and will become panacea for the ills of many Government Departments. This reduction in retirement age will work out as lever for Government to reduce headcount, cut costs and inject new blood to the changing organisations. Even, this scheme is less harsh than firing people and it works out more humane way of reducing the size. There is a feeling among the younger generations that sixth pay rate of pay may not be congruent with their current productivity of older employees. Apart from this, the BJP Manifesto of enhancing the career opportunities for younger and often less expensive employees will reduce the costs of social security such as pension, if implemented before the approval of seventh pay commission report and consequent increase in the pension funds requirement.

The anticipated problems are increase in life expectancy will make the early retirement plan costly since pension benefits have to be paid for a longer period of time. Even, the reduction in age may impose additional costs on the Government as well as quasi fixed costs.  They will cause harsh criticism as it will create serious issues like financial problems, psychological problems, values, power and security, identity crises, boredom. It is involuntary compared to voluntary schemes of many banks. Some view that it will be contrary to the international standards, where Government workers work up to 65 years, it is a sort of age discrimination, it will exploit the vulnerable position of late career employees who have limited future options. No doubt, in India salary increases by age and not on productivity, even it is true in educational sector. Some experts argue that to align, this striking imbalance of productivity and salary, as such, as a worker becomes older, productivity declines while salaries continue to rise, this reduction in the retirement age comes to the rescue. But research has not confirmed its validity. Many researchers have concluded that age and productivity are unrelated. On the other hand there is increased productivity in the professionals like University or College faculty.

In many Universities of international repute such as Harvard, MIT and Yale, elimination of arts and science faculty members with buyout package is common. There are many public funded University Departments, which have become not viable, useless. In all Government Departments the expenditures and performances have been placed under scrutiny by the general public to utilize effectively the available resources. Government departments are now more accountable to public. Even, severe competitions from private organisations also exert pressure on them to reduce expenditure. Even, Universities are not separate from this issue.

Indian Universities mainly (Except self-funded Deemed to be Universities and Private Universities) rely on funding from Government.  The contribution from its primary stake holder, i.e. students is meagre, only a small part of revenue comes from students, the large chunk of money comes from the public as tax, whether this is justifiable? Public recently started question the validity of spending money on higher education. The mood is grim now, there has been fund crunch, cut in funds, how to achieve this?

A pertinent question that has often been emerged here, is it easy to downsize Universities? Universities have their goals and objectives.  No doubt, higher education has been facing severe budget crisis in recent history. The government priority on other services such as health care, primary and secondary education have been responsible for cut in funding of Universities. However, unlike corporate sector, where cutting costs lead to increment to shareholders value, there would be less incentive for Indian Universities to control costs and financial control is an indicator for the success of Universities. 

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College Faculty at Karnataka

The objective of this blog is to post all the news items related to tertiary faculty of Karnataka. It covers basically undergraduate colleges imparting BA, B.Com and B.Sc and Post Graduate Colleges.