Producing PhD must for professorship

Chennai: Anna University’s syndicate on Monday passed a resolution making it mandatory for associate professors to guide at least one PhD student to get the professorship, according to sources in the university.

It also raised the bar for the promotion of assistant professor to associate professor by adding a new condition that the assistant professors will be given career advancement only after getting their guideship and involved in guiding the PhD candidates.

Anna University Vice-Chancellor M.K. Surappa moved the resolution to improve the research output of the faculty members.

But, these two new rules will affect a majority of faculty members and in particular women faculty members who as per All India Council for Technical Education's (AICTE) are eligible with the minimum qualification for promotion.

After a prolonged gap, the university is conducting interviews with faculty members for promoting them to the next level.

“To get the guideship, a faculty member needs to publish minimum five research articles as per the regulations. It will be difficult to produce many quality research articles without the PhD students,” professors said.

 In IITs, the minimum qualification for the faculty members is PhD whereas in Anna University’s engineering departments minimum qualification is only PG degree and they have to complete their PhDs in part-time and do research for research publications, they pointed out.

For science departments at Anna University, the minimum qualification is PhD and there are more journals for them to get their research articles published.“Further, the faculty members were not aware that they would get their promotion only if they get their guideship or produced one PhD for promotion. It is unfair to implement a new rule now which is not mentioned in the AICTE guidelines,” they argued.

Other professors requested the university administration to defer the implementation of the rule for future promotions. “It is only a time-bound promotion,” they said.

 The university administration is likely to give promotion to assistant professors and associate professors only from the date when they fulfil these minimum conditions.The time frame for eligibility for promotion from associate professor to professorship is only three years. Professors say it is impossible to guide a student in just three years.A section of professors said it is possible to produce PhD in three years. “The current crisis is the result of the unmindful relaxation of PhD norms. The rules to get guideship were changed several times and there is no consistency in the rules,” they added. Professors from Anna University Teachers’ Association said the women faculty members will be affected by the new rules as a very few women faculty members got their guideship.

Only 23% seats in M.E., M.Tech courses filled

Of 16,730 seats available in M.E., M.Tech., and M.Ach courses, only 3891 (23%) seats filled through Tamil Nadu Common Admissions 2018 counselling that was ended on Friday.

Tamil Nadu Common Admissions committee has conducted the counselling to fill the seats in PG courses in engineering colleges from August 28 to 31.

“Out of 6,376 students who were called for the counselling, 3891 students alone got the allotments; 2592 students were absent and 253 students skipped the counselling,” sources said.

“Due to the poor treatment of engineering faculty members by private college managements and poor salary are the main reasons for the decrease in the admissions. The ME and MTech graduates are being offered as low as '8,000 per month which resulted in the steep fall in admissions,” said K.M. Karthik, founder, All India Private Colleges Employees Union (AIPCEU).

“The PG graduates used to have the minimum guarantee of joining as lecturers. But, AICTE’s reduction in the faculty-student ratio from 1:15 to 1:20 also forced job loss for many engineering lecturers,” he added.