NEW DELHI: The Centre has recruited over 1200 teachers- M Tech and PhD degree holders from country’s top engineering and science institutes as assistant professors in some engineering colleges in 11 “underdeveloped states”, marking the beginning of appointment of contractual teachers in the institutes of technical education.
The young graduates from IITs, NITs, IITs, Indian Institute of Science and Indian Institutes of Science Education and Research have recently joined 53 colleges run by state governments in Bihar, Odisha, Uttar Pradesh, Jammu and Kahsmir, Assam and Rajasthan, Jharkhand, Andaman and Nicobar, Tripura, Uttarakhand and Madhya Pradesh.
The teachers will be given a salary of Rs 70000 each per month for a period of 3 years. Among the teachers who have been selected under the initiative, 293 are PhDs while 932 hold Masters degrees.
The Union Human Resource Development Ministry is spending a total of Rs 370 crore through this initiative, that is aimed at providing quality teachers to technical institutes in far-flung areas which have been dealing with the crisis of shortage of good teachers.
“This is the first time that such a measure has been taken to improve the quality of higher education in the country. Not many teachers want to go to far flung areas so it’s heartening to see that highly qualified students have responded to our call so enthusiastically,” said HRD minister Prakash Javadekar. “These teachers will improvise the entire educational eco-system of these areas apart from promoting a start-up culture among students,” said the minister.
Government sources said that a total of 5000 applications had been received for the post of 1235 teachers that aimed to fill the vacancy of all entry-level teachers in the selected 53 engineering institutes.
Experts, while welcoming the move, raised concerns on what happens to these appointees after 3 years.
“While assisting states in finding qualified teachers is a good move and will help deal with the shortage of teachers in many technical institutes—there is a lack of clarity on whether these recruits will be absorbed or retained by the state governments after 3 years,” said Dheeraj Sanghi, professor of Computer Science at IIT Kanpur.
“Also there could also be issues of institute level politics as these highly qualified teachers from outside will be seen as threats from those who are already there. It needs to be seen how these issues are taken care of,” Sanghi said.
N P Padhy, dean (academics) at IIT, Roorkee said that many students from his institutes have also taken up the offers. “I think that it’s a win-win situation for both fresh graduates and engineering institutes in states and hope that these hirings are later made permanent.”