NEW DELHI: The University Grant Commission (UGC) is all set to revamp the process of appointment of teachers and academic staff in colleges and universities.
Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan will release the draft UGC Regulations on Minimum Qualifications for Appointment of Teachers & Academic Staff in Universities & Colleges, 2025, on January 6, a notification by the UGC said.
The UGC made the announcement on its official handle on the social media platform X.
https://x.com/ugc_india/status/1875147088511775154?t=Oqo_7XI5LZXB9AmlSaQ2Aw&s=08
UGC Chairman M. Jagadesh Kumar, in a recent interview, hinted at the major shift in the norms being followed to recruit teachers and other academic staff in the higher educational institutions (HEIs), adding that the revised regulations aim to remove the rigid eligibility criteria and offer the universities more flexibility in hiring teachers from multidisciplinary backgrounds.
The revised regulations will be flexible, aspirational, and the recruitment norms will be aligning with the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020.
As per the current norms, candidates seeking appointment at the assistant professor level must have cleared the UGC NET. For appointments for associate professor and professor posts, a PhD is mandatory and a minimum of 10 years of teaching experience is needed for promotion to the professor post.
Describing these norms as rigid, the UGC Chairperson said these regulations came into effect in 2018, before the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 was implemented.
Academia-industry gap
The NEP 2020 advocates inclusion of industry experts and people with multidisciplinary education in educational institutions to help bridge the academia-industry gap.
Accordingly, the revised regulations have been framed and the draft UGC Regulations on Minimum Qualifications for Appointment of Teachers & Academic Staff in Universities & Colleges, Regulations, 2025, will be in public domain for wider consultations.
The UGC Chairperson said the primary focus of the existing guidelines for teacher recruitment is on academic qualifications, publishing in journals and Academic Performance Indicator (API) points, saying that this is a quantitative way to measure the quality of a teacher’s work and proficiency level.
The revised regulations are likely do away with the API system in recruitment and promotion of teachers in HEIs.