Rule to create hassles for State varsities

New UGC Rule

BY OUR STAFF REPORTER

GUWAHATI, March 13: The University Grant Commission’s latest rule to accord more weightage to graduation scores than doctoral degrees in hiring teachers for colleges and universities has generated mixed responses in Assam.

As per the draft UGC (Minimum Qualifications for Appointment of Teachers) Regulations, 2018, a candidate with 80 per cent marks in graduation stands to get 21 weightage points while applying for a college teacher post. The weightage is one point more than what a candidate will get for having a PhD degree.

Many academics and teachers have termed the UGC’s latest move as “regressive” and “biased” against poor. They said many candidates from villages or disadvantaged backgrounds cannot often perform well in their graduation due to various reasons and might be affected by the proposed selection formula of UGC.

“The new rule will also affect those who graduated over a decade ago. Many students in the past were not able to score high marks. Now evaluation has become liberal,” a teacher said.

On other hand teachers at Gauhati University and Dibrugarh University are expressing fear that with introduction of uniform rule for selection of teachers across the country the UGC will now interfere in selection nitty-gritty that had always been left to the universities to decide.

Each university has been following its own norms for selection of faculties. For example, Gauhati University and Dibrugarh University normally allow candidates with a first division throughout their career to appear for selections.

“The new rule will create problems for us. Since the rule is now under the draft format we will put forward our suggestions and recommendations to effect the necessary changes,” a teacher at Gauhati University said.

The draft rules have made a PhD degree mandatory for the post of associate professor in all institutions. It has also made PhD qualification a must for appointment of assistant professors in university departments from July 2021 in addition to qualifying the tiol Eligibility Test (NET) or the State Level Eligibility Test (SLET).