Why it is in news?

• The Parliamentary Standing Committee Expressed  serious concern over the shortage of teaching staff and delays in key recruitments in higher educational institutions
• The Parliamentary Standing Committee on Human Resource Development has suggested that students pursuing Ph.D be made to teach some courses at degree level with some financial support to mitigate the “crisis” of faculty shortage.
• The document was placed in Parliament just before it adjourned sine die.

Areas Of Concern

• The committee feels that the delay in the recruitment process of teachers/facilitators and for the post of Vice-Chancellor in academic institutions leads to lowering of academic standards in these institutions
• The committee also points out that the [higher education] department should encourage the institutions to make the students pursuing Ph.D/doctoral degrees to teach some
• courses at the degree level with some financial support.
• This would encourage more students to take up teaching profession and also mitigate the crises of faculty shortage in these institutions.

Autonomous bodies

• The government had in its action taken report said universities were autonomous bodies created under a Central or State Act and the onus for filling vacancies lay with them.
• The committee, however, observed that the steps taken by the Ministry of Human Resource Development, particularly in respect of Central Universities, have hardly achieved any result as more than one-third faculty positions are still vacant.
• The committee also recommended that the recruitment process should start in advance before a post is vacated so that the newly recruited person occupies the post immediately after the retirement of the previous occupant.
• The total number of sanctioned teaching posts in Central Universities is 16,600 (2,376 professors, 4,708 associate professors, 9,521 assistant professors). Out of these, 5,928 are lying vacant: 2,173 professors, 2,173 associate professors and 2,478 assistant professors.