Patna varsity faces acute shortage of teachers, says vice-chancellor

PATNA: Even as Patna University (PU) on Saturday appointed about 150 guest faculties against vacant sanctioned posts of assistant professors in different subjects on temporary basis, its colleges and postgraduate departments would continue to face teachers’ shortage with the commencement of new academic session in July.
The crisis is likely to deepen with the introduction of choice based credit system (CBCS) at the undergraduate stage from this session.The postgraduate departments have already introduced CBCS for all their conventional and self-financing courses.
In fact, all the superior posts of teachers, including associate professors and professors, sanctioned to PU decades ago by the state government and the UGC are lying vacant and no appointment on these posts has been made for the last four decades, PU sources said.
Teachers who are serving as associate professors or professors in PU are occupying the sanctioned posts of assistant professors (the erstwhile lecturers) and the posts would be deemed vacant only when they superannuate from the university service.
All the ‘present-day’ associate professors and professors are the beneficiaries of various promotion schemes, including time-bound promotion, merit promotion and career advancement schemes. All these are personal promotion schemes as none of them have been directly recruited on the post of associate professors or professors and they continue to hold the sanctioned post of assistant professors on which they were initially appointed by the university, said sources.
PU vice-chancellor Girish Kumar Choudhary told this newspaper that the university has been facing acute shortage of teachers as it is left with very few vacant posts of assistant professors in different subjects. Over the years, neither the Bihar Public Service Commission nor the Bihar State University Service Commission has advertised any post of assistant professor and consequently all these posts are lying vacant, he said.
The history department has only two assistant professors working against 21 sanctioned posts. Moreover, 20 superior posts, including 16 associate professors and four professors, are lying vacant for more than four decades. Even the head of the PU history department has been borrowed from the ancient Indian history and archaeology department.
Department head D P Kamal said the academic activities are being managed somehow with the help of some guest faculty.
PU Hindi department head Tarun Kumar said he is facing great difficulties in ensuring regular classes owing to acute shortage of teachers. As many as 15 sanctioned posts of professors and associate professors in Hindi are lying vacant. These posts are not supposed to be vacant when the appointment of assistant professors is made, he said.
The VC said the issue was raised at a recent meeting of the vice-chancellors with education minister Vijay Kumar Choudhary. The problem of scarcity of teachers would be automatically resolved if the superior posts are advertised. Even if the government is unable to make direct appointments on these posts for some reasons, the university should be allowed to appoint at least guest faculty against these vacant posts for the time being.
He said the old system of appointing retired teachers against vacant posts on payment of honorarium may also be introduced to tide over the crisis.