UGC revises guidelines to fill vacant faculty posts

In a bid to address the issue of shortage of quality teaching faculty in higher education institutions, the University Grants Commission (UGC) has issued fresh guidelines for the recruitment of faculty in these institutions.

The UGC has set a time-frame of six months for the entire recruitment process for the faculties including identification of vacancies, permission for filling vacancies, release of advertisement, constitution of selection committee, fixing of dates of the selection committee meetings and scrutiny of applications.

"All the universities, colleges and institutions Deemed to be Universities are requested that the enclosed guidelines shall be adhered to in letter and spirit. You are requested to take steps to ensure the vacancies in the universities as well as the Colleges affiliated to your university are filled at the earliest," UGC Secretary, Rajnish Jain wrote in a letter to the Vice Chancellors.

The selection procedure section of the revised guidelines states that the UGC should ensure that all the vacant posts, along with reservation details, are uploaded on the online portal www.nherc.in. "The monitoring of the filling up of the vacancies would be done by MHRD and UGC through this portal," it states.

The guidelines state that the higher education institutions should follow the selection process as per their Acts, statutes or constituent documents and in accordance with the UGC (Minimum Qualifications for Appointment of Teachers and other Academic Staff in Universities and Colleges and other Measures for the Maintenance of Standards in Higher Education) Regulations, 2018.