BASANT KUMAR MOHANTY New Delhi, Feb. 16: Older central universities have floated a proposal to convert vacant senior faculty posts to entry-level ones to tackle the issue of "unavailability of candidates" and meet the six-month deadline set by the President to fill them up.
At a vice-chancellors' meet last week, Pranab Mukherjee - the Visitor of all these universities - also asked HRD minister Smriti Irani to fill up vacant vice-chancellor posts in new central universities. The President expressed concern that nearly 40 per cent posts in central varsities were vacant and said they must be filled up in six months. About 6,254 teaching posts are vacant in central universities against the sanctioned strength of 16,324. Most vacancies are at the levels of associate professor and professor. One group suggested the senior posts were not being filled up because of lack of eligible candidates but there were enough applicants for assistant professor-level jobs. Faculty members are generally not keen to change institutions because they cannot carry their pension under the scheme effective since 2004. The scheme wants employees to contribute to the pension fund. Those employed before 2004 are entitled to normal pension. A vice-chancellor said if associate professor and professor-level posts were downgraded to that of assistant professor, the institutions could fill up a substantial number of vacant posts in six months. However, the proposal was opposed by new central universities, which are struggling to attract senior teachers. A member of Delhi University's executive council, Abha Dev Habib, said: "The universities have not been advertising posts for years together." http://www.telegraphindia.com/1150217/jsp/nation/story_3861.jsp -- Avinash Shahi Doctoral student at Centre for Law and Governance JNU Register at the dedicated AccessIndia list for discussing accessibility of mobile phones / Tabs on: http://mail.accessindia.org.in/mailman/listinfo/mobile.accessindia_accessindia.org.in Search for old postings at: http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/ To unsubscribe send a message to [email protected] with the subject unsubscribe. To change your subscription to digest mode or make any other changes, please visit the list home page at http://accessindia.org.in/mailman/listinfo/accessindia_accessindia.org.in Disclaimer: 1. Contents of the mails, factual, or otherwise, reflect the thinking of the person sending the mail and AI in no way relates itself to its veracity; 2. AI cannot be held liable for any commission/omission based on the mails sent through this mailing list..
