THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Scoring 100 out of 100 is an excellent feat in any competition. But how about scoring 11875.8 out of 125? The Academic Performance Index (API) scorecard of the teachers who were part of a mass promotion in the Kerala Agricultural University (KAU) in 2014 defies algebraic logic.
Fourteen teachers, those in the ranks of professor and assistant professor, scored manifold above the maximum score of 125 set for one of the three categories in the API scorecard.
As per UGC norms, a fixed minimum API score is mandatory for teachers to be considered for promotion. An inspection by the government’s Finance Inspection Wing (FIW) has found that the unusual score in category-I of the teachers was to make up for their abysmally low performance in the other two categories. The wing found that the KAU management had tweaked the UGC directions for preparing the API scorecard to help some get promotion and to deny the same to others.
“Some teachers had a very high score in category-I - teaching-learning evaluation-related activities, which did not match with the total working hours. Many of them could not secure the minimum score in category- III for ‘research and academic contribution’.”
The wing has recommended the government to review the API scores of KAU teachers from 2014 and reconstitute KAU’s Internal Quality Assurance Cell (IQAC). The inspection followed a petition by an assistant professor in KAU, KD Prathapan. The IQAC had allegedly denied him promotion citing flimsy reasons. The FIW asked the university to promote him.