UGC Declared to not Increase Workload Among Teachers

After the intervention of the Union Human Resource Development Ministry (HRD), the UGC has finally declared that there will be no additional workload added to the professors, assistant and associate professors in the colleges and educational institutes across the country. The UGC in the month of May had decided to amend the policy to increase the workload among teachers in such institutes, which face the wrath from the central university teachers collectively and left them protesting against the notification.

The Ministry of HRD, which was earlier planning to hold a meeting at the end of May, has decided to hold a general meeting with all the stakeholders on 6 June 2016. The ministry will discuss issues of Academic Performance Indicators score for promotion of university teachers, which was earlier suggested by the UGC.

Giving a sigh of relief to many teachers, the UGC in its statement said, “The overall workload of assistant professors and associate professors/professors in full employment will remain unchanged and the direct teaching-learning hours per week to be devoted by assistant professors (16 hours) and associate professors/professors (14 hours) too would remain.”

The Chairman of Academics of Action and Development (Rathi) of Delhi University J. Khuntiya reacted to the development saying, “Time for MHRD to come out with a clear education policy without creating further uncertainty after this welcome rollback. Higher education cannot afford ill-conceived experimentation that attacks the very existence of teachers. Now the priority should be completing the appointment process and scrapping the highly irrational API which has been created to deny promotion. Is the point system applicable to the civil services? If not, then why for teachers? There cannot be differential treatment for teachers with respect to distribution of resources. Agitation will continue till API is also rolled back.”