CHENNAI: Faculty members from private engineering colleges demand that the All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) set up a ‘National Salary Board’, to regulate disbursal of salary. The demand comes in the wake of AICTE’s recent suggestion that engineering colleges hike fees they collected from students, in order to meet pay revisions stipulated for faculty. In a letter recently, AICTE member-secretary Rajiv Kumar had asked all States to direct admission and fee regulation and ensure colleges met the seventh pay commission notifications, while fixing fees.
As per the seventh pay commission, assistant professors should be paid nearly Rs 70,000 a month, without allowances. However, in reality, faculty of the grade get paid in the range of Rs 15,000 to Rs 30,000. A senior member from the Self Financing College Association, on condition of anonymity said most private colleges cannot meet these standards.
“As it is, enrolment in engineering is dropping. We cannot meet the salary revisions when we do not have that much inflow of money,” he said.
Many technical institutions continue to pay faculty much below eligible criteria. Kumar said that this was because colleges are unable to comply with pay commission’s standards in the absence of reasonable fee.
While engineering colleges may increase fee collected from upcoming academic year, it will not translate to fair payment of faculty, said KM Karthik, president of All India Private Engineering College Employees Union.
“The private einstitutions normally show a margin of 70 per cent of their income to be spent on teacher salaries alone. But in reality only 20 per cent and less of expenditure are paid as salary,” he charged. In order to ensure transparency, the AICTE should set up a National Salary Board through which managements should channel their salaries, he said.