Chennai: At a meeting with registrars of state universities last week, higher education minister P Viswanathan proposed a new recruitment board to hire faculty members for state universities and govt colleges.
The Teachers Recruitment Board (TRB) has been selecting faculty members for govt colleges and state universities through examinations. However, following court cases and a delay in the recruitment process, the state universities and govt colleges have been functioning with nearly 50% vacancies in teaching and non-teaching posts.
“TRB lacks expertise in recruiting faculty members for colleges. The higher education minister has asked university officials for opinions on creating a separate board to recruit faculty members for state universities and colleges,” said a source from a state university.
The higher education department recently collected details of vacancies in all state universities and govt colleges.
TRB recently declared the results of a recruitment exam conducted in Dec last year to fill 2,700 assistant professor posts in govt colleges. It is yet to release the list of candidates shortlisted for interview.
At the meeting last week, Viswanathan discussed filling key positions, including registrars and controllers of examinations. He also reviewed initiatives taken to improve academic quality, such as capacity building for faculty members, timely conduct of examinations and publication of results, and improvement of college labs and campus infrastructure.
The minister reviewed the quality of semester exam question papers. “Most of the state universities are in the process of including application-oriented questions in their semester exams,” an official said.
The minister then felicitated seven govt college students who secured admissions to top-ranked institutions such as IITs and NITs for post-graduation. They were among the 180 students who attended coaching to aid admissions to higher educational institutions as part of the basic science promotion programme.
Higher education secretary Dheeraj Kumar and state council for higher education vice-chairperson M P Vijayakumar, among others, attended the meeting.
