Team Herald
PANJIM: Citing that vacant positions at the Goa University (GU) was one of the major factors for drop in the National Institute Ranking Framework (NIRF) which listed the GU at 64th position from 20th last year among other universities of the country, the officials at the university have said that they are hoping to fill at least 60 vacancies out of the total 90 in the coming six months.
Speaking to Herald, GU Registrar, V V Reddy said, “If you see the parameters of the NIRF ranking, there is a 10 percent weightage for the faculty, so the bigger universities will gain. Ours is the smallest university in the country, so smaller universities will lose; again with a large number of vacancies, it creates a problem.
Currently 90 posts are vacant and by January 2018 we hope to fill 60 vacancies but the remaining 30 will remain vacant, because of the non-availability of candidates or some other reason. If candidates are available we would like to fill all.”
“Reason for the vacancies is that, at associate professor level, we do not have locally qualified candidates and nobody is willing to relocate to some other place because everyone is being promoted through Career Advancement Scheme (CAS) in their own universities. This has discouraged professors from institutions outside Goa to apply for posts here,” Reddy said.
The second reason, he said, is that professors from other universities are already in a pensionable job and that if they relocate to GU they would lose their pension. So this has become a big hurdle where senior faculty is moving from one university to another. Even when the university had advertised the last time hardly anybody applied.
“Third reason is that as per sixth pay commission these APS courses have come for faculty and to become professor you need to have 400 points and to become associate professor 300 points. Before this if he/she had 5 papers they were eligible for the post. This is also becoming a main hurdle for people to meet the criteria and be eligible for that post. The faculty we need for higher posts is not available in the state of Goa,” he said
Reddy further informed that at first the GU is waiting for the government to lift the ban on recruitment stating that they have already sent a letter to the government seeking permission to advertise for the posts and in coming six months the university plans to announce and make an appointment. This process can happen from now and say by December-January we want to complete the recruitment process.
“So with all this we will keep new people in place for the 2018-19 academic years and not the coming academic year. Last two three years large number of people are retiring. People who joined the university since inception many are retiring. Last four years you take, 20 people have retired, if you take another four years another 30 are going to retire. Unless he or she retires posts cannot be vacant and you need an approval from the government so you know the process of approval and all that”, he added
However, the registrar stressed that for a university to improve it needs good infrastructure, faculty members and placements. We will closely look at the parameters and make our own efforts and also concentrate and improve the parameters.
