Appointment norms for engineering colleges to be relaxed

Union Human Resource Development Minister Kapil Sibal. File Photo: Rajeev Bhatt

Union Human Resource Development Minister Kapil Sibal has assured the self-financing engineering colleges that the revised norms stipulating all engineering colleges to appoint only M.Tech qualified persons as Assistant Professors and Ph.D. holders as Associate Professors would not be insisted for three years.

The assurance was given on Thursday to a delegation of the Federation of Managements of Unaided Professional Institutions in India (FAMPEI) led by its president V. Malakonda Reddy who had submitted a memorandum seeking relaxation of the condition.

Founder and Chancellor of the Sathyabama University Jeppiaar told

The Hindu from Chennai that the Minister assured the delegation that the condition would not be insisted for three years in view of the difficulties experienced by the self-financing colleges in getting post graduate engineering graduates for appointment as Assistant Professors and Ph.D. holders for Associate Professors.

In its memorandum, the FAMPEI wanted the Minister to modify some of the norms which were not practicable and not implementable under present circumstances, viz “in the new norms for the Assistant Professor M.Tech. is made compulsory in addition to B.E./B.Tech. Degree and for the Associate Professor, Ph.D. is made compulsory in addition to M.Tech. degree and five years experience as Assistant Professor.”

It said, “it is impossible to implement this norm as there is severe shortage of competent teaching staff with M.Tech. and Ph.D. qualifications. In view of this non-availability of competent teaching staff as per the High Power Committee report accepted by the All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE), we request the Minister to kindly adopt the existing norms for qualifications which do not insist on M.Tech. and Ph.D. for the post of Assistant Professor and Associate Professor respectively.

“Further as the AICTE norms are uniform throughout the Country, there should be uniform minimum fee structure. The Central Fee Fixation Committee under the Chairmanship of Justice Ranganath Mishra, appointed by the AICTE three years ago for arriving at a minimum reasonable fee structure for all the engineering colleges in the country should be requested to submit the report immediately and that fee structure should be made mandatory minimum in all the States and should be implemented at once.”