Join Protest demonstration by DUTA ON 6th June at UGC from 9:30 am!
3.6.16
Friends,
Teachers in Universities and colleges across the country have been fighting against the manner in which academic performance of teachers are being calculated through a system called Academic Performance Indicator (API) which was introduced by UGC in its 2010 Regulations. API system will calculate the performance of the teachers in quantifiable terms and these assessments are linked to their promotions. It was withdrawn after facing massive resistance from the teaching community in 2013 but it was re-introduced. The system takes no account of the infrastructural inadequacies of public institutions and it would adversely impact the promotion prospects of thousands of teachers. It does not take into account the amount of time spent for the preparation of teaching beyond workdays and work hours and reduces teaching into a “corporate-model professionalism”. Given these criticisms and mounting pressure, Nigaverkar Committee was formed to look into this matter among other issues in July 2015 by Ministry of Human Resource Development. It is reported that the committee submitted its recommendations to the regulatory body in early 2016. The committee has not only legitimized the existing API system but also introduced more aggravations.
The Gazette Notification of Third Amendment to UGC Regulations, dated May 10th 2016, has incorporated Nigaverkar Committee recommendations in it. The Amendment notification of UGC, 2016 includes changes in the working hours of teachers. The UGC Regulations 2010 under the section “workload” states that “direct teaching-learning process hours per week” will be 16 hours for Assistant Professors and 14 for Associate Professors and Professors and lectures and tutorials are both counted as “direct teaching-learning contact hours”. The Amendment notification of 2016 increased the working hours of Assistant Professors from 16 to 24 hours under two sections: 18 hours for lectures and 6 hours for tutorials, from 14 to 22 (16 hours for lectures and 6 for tutorials) hours for associate professors and from 14 to 20 hours (14 for lectures and 6 for tutorials) for professors.
The amendment also points out that tutorials can no longer be put in the same category as lectures (in direct teaching-learning contact hours) but have to be marked out separately. Though it was pointed out by an earlier UGC notification that with the increase in the numbers of students, “the tutorial sessions originally which are envisioned with groups of 4-5 students, now effectively include 16 to 20 members thus qualifying as full-fledged teaching workload”. The weightage carried by practical classes have been reduced to half of that which is carried by lectures in terms of workload per hour.So there will be a steep increase in working hours in science departments.Nearly 50 percent of the existing teachers in all universities would be rendered redundant and it would drastically curtail numbers of vacancies and posts because of the increase in the workload of teachers holding permanent positions. The worst affected will be the ad-hoc and guest teachers who are already deprived of professional entitlements and will lose their jobs because of unavailability of work.
The workload per day for assistant professors would be 4.8 hours including both lectures and tutorials, 4.4 hours and 4 hours for associate professors and professors when there are five working days in a week. It clearly shows that the workload in 2016-UGC regulations does not take into account hours of preparation that lectures and tutorials (which have now become equally demanding as lectures due to the increase in the number of students) require and also hours spent by teachers to produce quality research work. This UGC notification says that points would be awarded on the basis of publications made in UGC recognized journals and accounted for promotions.
It would severely harm the quality of teaching in higher education.It is an attempt to promote specific areas of research by limiting the number of journals in which one can publish for the advancement of his/her professional career and to discourage those research works which challenge the ideology of those who are in power by making them irrelevant in terms of getting promotion or employment. True to its ideology, ABVP, the students organization of RSS, has welcomed the regulations of UGC.
The fascist forces are constantly attacking and attempting to saffronize the educational institutions of this country by placing their stooges in key positions in these institutions. Students movements are rising up across the country, FTII, IIT-Madras, HCU, JNU, AU, BHU, etc, against these fascists diktats.The government’s attempt, through this amendment, is to make structural changes in higher education to further advance the neo-liberal policies with the sole agenda to sell education as a commodity and at the same time saffronize the educational institutions. The forceful introduction of semester system in Delhi University, FYUP and CBCS, API system and UGC regulations of 2016 which not only severely affects the teachers but also students are attempts, guided by neoliberal policies of the state, to destroy the education institutions of this country. Against the UGC notification, Delhi University Teachers Association called for a mass boycott of evaluation duties and took out a march. Democratic Students’ Union stands in solidarity with DUTA in its struggle against anti-teacher and anti-student UGC regulations.
DSU firmly stands against this government’s design to saffronize higher education and sell education.
Students-Teachers Unity Long Live !
dsu
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