681/1334: Panjab University short of regular teachers

Akashdeep Virk

Chandigarh, July 23

Panjab University has been reeling under an acute shortage of regular faculty members for the past few years. The university has 1,334 sanctioned seats of regular faculty members on the campus, of which 681 are vacant.

A university source told the The Tribune that of the total sanctioned seats, 391 are of professor, 290 of associate professor and 653 of assistant professor. As on December 26, 2023, only 268 seats of professor, 85 of associate professor and 300 of assistant professor were filled.

Apart from the existing regular faculty, the university has around 400 guest faculty members and contractual staff, said a senior university official. In spite of these teachers, the campus is still short of the sanctioned strength.

According to the norms of the University Grants Commission, a research supervisor/co-supervisor, who is a professor, cannot guide more than eight PhD scholars at any given point of time. Also, an associate professor as research supervisor can guide up to a maximum of six PhD scholars, and an assistant professor as research professor can only guide four PhD scholars under his/her supervision.

With 123 vacancies of professor, 205 of associate professor and 353 of assistant professor on the campus and given the fact that the guest faculty members cannot supervise scholars, the scope of research is most likely to get hampered in this premier institution.

“It is the Central Government’s duty to create jobs and strengthen the education departments all over the country, including PU, which should be their priority,” said Professor Amarjeet Singh Nauhra, president of Punjab University Teachers’ Association.

While the issue of staff crunch has been highlighted a number of times, the university authorities claim to have their own reasons for this shortage. According to a senior university official, since 2017, the UGC’s permission is required to fill the posts of teaching faculty, which causes unnecessary hurdles. Moreover, the authorities have to operate within a set budget and for the past few years, the university had been demanding more funds from the government, a senior official said.

“There has been no recruitment of regular faculty since 2014. The university had advertised some posts in 2019 but the recruitment had to be cancelled. Most of the present faculty members are retiring in 2022-2026 with as many as 30-35 regular faculty members leaving the campus, including the ones on extension. This is a major issue which shall soon be addressed,” said a PU Senate fellow, Professor Jatinder Grover.

The existing strength includes the teachers who are on extension after attaining the age of retirement (60 years). In April 2023, the PU Syndicate and Senate had approved teachers’ demand to increase their retirement age from 60 to 65. The university is still awaiting a nod from the Ministry of Education regarding the same. However, a lot of regular faculty members on the verge of retirement have sought extension through interim orders of court and are employed on the campus till the age of 65.

The Dean of University Instruction, Professor Rumina Sethi, said, “The university has advertised various posts in 2022, 2023 and 2024. These are primarily teaching posts of associate and assistant professor in almost all subjects. The process of pre-screening and screening is extremely tedious and time-consuming, as hundreds of applications are received which have to be checked and rechecked to make sure all criteria are fulfilled. Thereafter we put up lists of shortlisted candidates on the website and invite objections from applicants. After all this is done, the interviews are slated where again, we have to give a number of days in between. We conducted several interviews before the elections and have started the interview process again this week. I assure that the university will see a lot of appointments in the next six months.”