Transfer worry among vacancies
A senior RBU professor said, “Faculty strength is one of the major parameters for university rankings and NAAC accreditation. Several teachers at these universities questioned how departments would function if faculty members were transferred while they were already struggling with severe staff shortage. If some of us are transferred to other universities, it will negatively impact our ranking and other key evaluation metrics. ”
TOI spoke to senior officials at many of the 31 state universities a day after CM Suvendu Adhikari addressed the Assembly, where he said experienced professors, accountants and experts from the eight established older institutes would be relocated to help newer campuses build better infrastructure. He added, “Under NEP 2020, there are interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary UG courses, along with major and minor tracks across different faculties, which inherently require more teachers. JU already faces a vacancy of over 300 teachers, so transferring faculty will only lead to further disruption in academic activities and weaken the public education system. Currently, of the 31 state universities, eight were founded before 2011,” Saha said, reiterating the prerequisite for improving academic performance was infrastructural development, specifically, recruitment of teaching and non-teaching staff.
Therefore, recruiting teachers and developing infrastructure is the actual solution, not transferring faculty from one place to another.
JUTA president Partha Pratim Ray said, “There can be no comparison between the faculty strength of the JU science departments and those at Gour Banga University. A teacher at Sanskrit University said, “Ours is a specialised institute. But many officials felt implementing a standardised transfer policy would not be easy, as the nature and operational model of each university differed. JU is a unitary university, where teachers must conduct UG and PG science courses, and UG engineering programmes. In contrast, Gour Banga University offers only PG courses. Given how few universities offer specialised subjects, such as Pali and Sanskrit, transferring teachers will hardly solve the underlying problem. “This is how the remaining universities are functioning.
WBCUTA general secretary Nilay Kumar Saha noted that the higher education minister himself admitted in the Assembly on Thursday that some universities had VC but no other officials, while some had registrars but no buildings.