Proposed UGC recruitment rules
Dr. K. Maudood Elahi, Professor,Department of Environmental Science, Stamford University Banglad
This refers to the news item on the uniform rules to be formulated by the UGC for recruitment and promotion of teachers and employees in the public universities (DS, 23 June 2007). This should have been done much earlier in the interest of higher education. Some kind of guidelines (if not rules) were also devised earlier by the UGC but they were modified/changed to accommodate the group interests of individual universities to suit their purpose. Therefore, particularly during the last five years or so, many unqualified teachers were recruited and undeserving candidates got promotion. The on-going enquiries by the committees formed by the UGC reveal some of the bizarre facts about recruitment and promotion of teachers in the public universities. It has been almost an open secret that political affiliation of candidates was collected beforehand and accordingly a selection meeting was staged. Soon after the 4-party alliance government came to power, the existing selection committees were reconstituted drastically so that the above activities could be made easy. There were instances in which the candidates had better academic records including publications and international exposure than some of the members in the selection committees! Disgusted and frustrated, a good number of senior teachers from public universities chose to join private universities in the country. I would urge the UGC to look into the academic background of the members of the selection committees as well who were involved in the selection processes, doing a long-term damage to our higher education system. It must be remembered that once an unqualified or less qualified teacher is recruited at the entry-point, he becomes a liability for about 40 years for the department or discipline. Likewise, an unqualified teacher getting promotion to a higher post would contribute nothing. The proposed recruitment rules by the UGC should also address this issue related to academic background, research activities and relevant experiences of the members of the selection committees.
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