With Chief Minister K. Chandrashekhar Rao deciding in principle that university teachers would be appointed through a recruitment board, the government is busy preparing guidelines and modalities for the same. The announcement of the board is expected shortly.
“The process will be completed soon. The government wants to be cautious not to land this in legal wrangles,” an official says, adding that the necessary amendments would be made to the University Act or bring in a new Act related to recruitments in Telangana universities: “Options will be weighed in.”
The government believes that the recruitment process through an entrance test is a radical move to change the very face of the universities in Telangana that are facing allegations of under-utilising resources, fraud in recruitment and staring at a bleak future unless drastic changes are brought about in the very core of the institutions — teaching.
“Only good teachers will produce good students and good research”, a senior official says, arguing that this move was imperative since the government universities now have to compete with private varsities as the Centre has started linking funding to performance and research output.
Vice-chairman of State Planning Board B. Vinod Kumar, who had been advocating this new method of recruitment for long, has said on several occasions that the CM wants Telangana universities to be among the best in the country. Even elsewhere in the world, it is good teachers, sound research and successful alumni that bring fame to the universities, and not just buildings or campuses, has been his argument.
Academics view setting up of a recruitment board as the first step in that direction. Recruitments in the last two decades were mired in controversies and allegations of corruption as well as political influence. In fact, committees constituted to inquire into the allegations also found those to be true in most cases and recommended cancelling appointments in some universities.
The decision is not sudden, says Telangana State Council of Higher Education chairman R. Limbadri. A committee of senior professors constituted a few years ago to study the appointment process recommended that joint recruitment be done for all the varsities either through the Telangana Public Service Commission or through a new recruitment board — a model adopted successfully in Bihar and Odisha.
Mr. Limbadri says common recruitment will eliminate corruption and favouritism since there is a common entrance test and only the best among them will be given to the universities to conduct interviews. As per current practice, every university conducts interviews of its own, thus opening the window of opportunity for political influence and corruption.
Under the proposed process, the interview part will have minimum marks, thus eliminating any scope for favouritism. “Even if someone goes out of the way to favour someone in the interview, the marks will not have much impact on the overall scores and the meritorious will not suffer,” an official says.
The earlier recruitment process also led to delays with the same candidate getting offers from multiple universities and choosing the better option, thus creating new vacancies. Now, performance in the exam will decide the university of recruitment, thus plugging any scope for multiple jobs.
The government is likely to fill up 1,892 teaching vacancies in 11 universities.
