Recently, the Union Minister of Education released the Draft UGC (Minimum Qualifications for Appointment and Promotion of Teachers and Academic Staff in Universities and Colleges and Measures for the Maintenance of Standards in Higher Education) Regulations, 2025. It seems to be an unprecedented move that a UGC document is released by the Union Ministry of Education (MoE), leading to apprehensions in many quarters that such endeavours smack of a sinister political intervention by the ruling dispensation in the recruitment process and career advancement of teachers. In a context of declining state funding for higher education, the draft also reflects the nefarious attempt to reduce the research agenda of public-funded universities to a subservient position vis-à-vis corporate interests. Further, in the backdrop of the pending 8th pay revision, the draft’s firm assertion that implementation of pay will be as per the 7th pay revision notified in 2016 has given rise to genuine suspicion that the periodic decennial pay revision will be discontinued.
Compromised recruitments and all-powerful selection committees
The draft UGC Regulations on hiring of teachers in Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) come in the wake of the introduction of the National Education Policy 2020 which has paved the way for many retrograde changes in the functioning of the HEIs. These Regulations seek to further buttress such changes in the domain of teacher recruitment as well.
The draft Regulations seek to bring the recruitment process in line with the changes brought by the NEP-influenced undergraduate curriculum framework (UGCF), specifically the replacement of the 3-year UG with a 4-year UG (with or without research component). The need to incentivize the 4-year UG and justify the imposed, poorly thought-out “multidisciplinarity” of UG programs is what informs the logic behind clause 3.2 and 3.3. These clauses state that even if one has not chosen a particular discipline/subject at the UG or PG level, but has done PhD or cleared NET/SET in that discipline/subject, one is eligible for appointment in that discipline/subject. This change in eligibility for recruitment marks a dangerous dilution of the academic credentials and competence that require to be built up from UG to PG level for quality research and effective university teaching.
Another dangerous feature of these draft Regulations is the emphasis on the nine so-called “notable contributions” to be considered by the selection committee for recruitment and for promotion of university and college teachers. As per these proposed clauses, a candidate would need to fulfil at least four out of the nine “notable contributions”. In clause 3.8 of the draft Regulations, these are listed out as: (1) Innovative Teaching Contribution; (2) Research or Teaching Lab Development; (3) Consultancy / Sponsored Research funding as a Principal Investigator or Co-Principal Investigator; (4) Teaching contributions in Indian languages; (5) Teaching-Learning and Research in Indian Knowledge System; (6) Student Internship / Project Supervision; (7) Digital Content Creation for MOOCs; (8) Community Engagement and Service; (9) Startup, as per the intellectual property policies of the HEI, registered with the Registrar of Companies (ROC) as a founding promoter, successfully raising funding through government, angel or venture funds to support the startup.
Many of the aforementioned parameters are difficult for applicants to attain at the entry level, especially with the proliferation of pay-by-hour guest lecturer appointments whose teaching experience is otherwise also not counted. These “notable contributions” will prove particularly onerous for candidates from different regions, given the disparity in resources and uneven development of educational infrastructure in our country. Ironically, when many in the teaching fraternity have been arguing against the proviso of 100 percent weightage for interviews in the UGC Regulations 2018 – a measure that has created the scope for all kinds of political cronyism and nepotism leading to mass displacements during permanent interviews held across Delhi University – the draft Regulations continue to deny any significant weightage to teaching experience at the interview stage. Clause 1.7 in the draft Regulations seeks to simply extract a presentation from candidates which can be easily manipulated as long as no weightage is separately assigned to past teaching experience. Such manipulation can be expected, especially given the ways in which the selection committee in the case of both recruitment and promotions is bestowed with arbitrary power. Notably, clause 3.11 of the draft Regulations declaring the selection committee as the final authority in deciding whether publications are peer reviewed and whether contributions are notable, is a highly arbitrary proviso. It will open the floodgates for nepotism in the hiring and promotion process.
Retarded promotions and subservient academic life
The nine “notable contributions” stipulated for promotions in the draft Regulations seriously undermine the fact that for undergraduate teachers, more than research and consultancy, the primary task has and continues to be teaching. In an ambience of long teaching hours, growing load of continuous evaluation and examinations every four months, mounting administrative work at the college level, and limited public funding and other facilities for research, it is unrealistic and unjust to demand UG teachers to churn out regular research output. The listed “notable contributions” coupled with the silence of the draft Regulations on the weekly workload norms of 14 hours and 16 hours for Professors/Associate Professors and Assistant Professors, respectively, which were specified in the earlier UGC Regulations 2018, creates the valid suspicion that teachers will be compelled to surrender to longer working hours, directly and indirectly, so as to fulfil the so-called notable contributions.
The specific weightage being ascribed to the development of research or teaching labs, sponsored research and raising startups through venture funds in points 2, 3 and 9 of clause 3.8 reflect an undeniable corporate-driven agenda. In a landscape of rampant infrastructure inequity and academic hierarchy within HEIs, including within constituent colleges of a university, many scholar-teachers cannot easily avail public funding for development of labs and research projects. The pressure to perform along such indices so as to avail employment and promotions shall simply pave the way for a dependency on domestic and foreign private funders. Indeed, it is not at all clear as to how the teachers are to develop labs without government funding. Since this sponsorship/funding would be tied to the agenda of the corporates/sponsors/investors, the research would correspondingly be dictated by their interests, instead of serving the needs of society; thereby marking an undeniable dilution of the role and responsibility of a public-funded university.
The point 6 of clause 3.8 laying emphasis on Student Internship / Project Supervision also stands to link promotions with enhanced corporatization of university education. Due to the lack of government scholarships/financial support for undergraduate students, such internship/supervision would tie down teachers and their students to constant fund mobilization. This has the propensity to translate into seeking loans from HEFA or private funding from market sources. In the bid to pursue their career advancement, teachers will be, consequently, increasingly rendered into seekers of loan/funding instead of pursuers of academic excellence. This apart, the overt emphasis on teaching-learning and research which is rooted in the Indian Knowledge System (point 5 of clause 3.8) strives to impose an insular kind of paradigm that hampers the cross fertilization of ideas and ideals, and which particularly seeks to minimize the influence of global perspectives and critical approaches arising from different nooks of the world. In this way, point 5 of clause 3.8 undermines the volition, agency and capacity of the academia to produce scholarship which can facilitate the much-required audit of society and polity. The active propagation of online learning via MOOCs and its linking to promotions as per point 7 of clause 3.8 also marks a major threat to our teaching workloads and sanctioned teaching positions in the near future.
Worryingly, at a time when teachers have been fighting for the counting of all their years of past service, it is alarming to see the draft Regulations reword clause 10 (f) (ii) of the UGC Regulations 2018 so as to assert in the new clause 6.0 that previous full-time ad-hoc or contractual service shall only be counted if such hiring was based on the recommendation of a duly constituted Selection Committee “as per UGC Regulations”. This reworded proviso stands to overrule the extant rules that have been duly deliberated and passed by statutory bodies of HEIs, and which the earlier 2018 UGC Regulations have recognized when it comes to the constitution of selection committees for temporary employment. Delhi University’s Executive Council resolution of 27.12.2007 on the terms and conditions of the ad-hoc teaching contract, due to which at least four to six years of ad-hoc teaching experience was being counted during promotions under the CAS, can now be brought into question. Hence, the miniscule years of past service that was earlier wrested from the system by the teachers’ movement is in limbo and can be easily snatched away, especially in the absence of a strong teachers’ union.
Additionally, while promotions under the earlier UGC Regulations have taken effect from the date of eligibility, the new draft Regulations speak of a biannual schedule. Clause 5.6.3 and clause 5.6.4 of the draft Regulations creates two time slots during which the promotion will be granted after assessment by the Selection Committee. This appears to fix solely two dates from which the promotion would take effect. Such pre-fixed promotion timelines have the propensity for financial loss and unnecessary, further delays in promotions.
Casualization of teaching and a road to political cronyism
The draft Regulations seek to make contractual employment of teachers a permanent feature of the higher education sector, given that the previous cap of 10 percent specified for such employment in clause 13.0 of the 2018 UGC Regulations has been removed from the proposed new draft. If the draft 2025 UGC Regulations goes through then it is bound to usher in more intensive contractualization and casualization of regular teaching posts. This will lead to downgrading of service conditions for teachers and the dilution of the teaching-learning process in the HEIs. The threat of reduced hiring of permanent faculty against sanctioned posts is a fast evolving, tangible threat, considering the workload flux created by reduced teaching hours; multiple entry and exit model of UGCF; the imposed higher teacher-student ratios; credits transfer via cluster colleges, MOOCs/online learning; and so on. A large army of contractual teachers will be consciously created in public-funded universities as a bulwark against permanent faculty who tend to resist skewed policy decisions and administrative high-handedness.
Add to this, the clause 9.0 on Professor of Practice (PoP) in the draft Regulations which allows HEIs to hire up to 10% professionals from industry and other non-academic professions. This proviso spells a doom not only in terms of growing intervention of private businesses and corporates in the academia and within the existing university governance model, but also in terms of the divisive strategy of creating yet another layer of faculty members who cannot be easily organized in trade unions or on wider concerns of the teaching fraternity due to the propensity for such appointments to be doled out more as a favour than on the basis of proven academic credentials. Of course, the proviso on hiring of PoP insultingly assumes that existing faculty of the University/college are incapable of effective teaching, dynamic research, and basically, incapable of understanding the needs of the larger economy and society.
Further, the draft Regulations spell doom for the public character of public-funded HEIs at the topmost administrative level as well. This is evident by the section 10.1 relating to the ‘Appointment of Vice Chancellor in Universities’. While the earlier Regulations of 2018 held that the Vice Chancellor should be of academic background, the draft Regulations 2025 dilute this condition by allowing for individuals in bureaucracy, industry, etc. to become Vice Chancellors. This effectively would transform the hitherto public-funded HEIs into bastions of corporate and industry driven institutions with no regard for the common public good; allowing easier imposition of the agenda of the ruling government and outright political partisanship. Such lateral entry of private players into the University’s administration and constant projection of private players as ‘more creative’ and ‘more capable’ administrators, belittles the acquired collective wisdom of the university community that pushes for sensitive, efficient and accountable administration. Moreover, clause 10.1 (iii), (iv) and (vi) on the constitution of a Search-cum-Selection Committee for appointment of Vice Chancellors has rightly drawn criticism of state governments where ruling opposition parties have been arguing that these new parameters represent a concerted attack on federalism and pave the way for unsolicited political intervention in state universities.
Dr Maya John teaches history at Jesus and Mary College, University of Delhi (DU). She is an elected teacher representative in the DU Academic Council. Email: [email protected]
