University of Mysore (UoM) Vice-Chancellor G. Hemantha Kumar on Friday said the varsity was likely to issue a notification within a fortnight for the appointment of teaching posts and consequently complete filling up vacant positions within six months.
He told the Academic Council meeting here that the University Grants Commission (UGC) has written to UoM, which is facing shortage of staff, including professors, associate professors and assistant professors, to fill up vacancies by six months and warned of blocking grants if it failed to comply.
Speaking to reporters after the meeting, the V-C said out of 665 sanctioned teaching posts, about 336 vacant posts were necessary to be filled up soon as no appointments had been made since 2007.
UoM had been running the show with guest faculty. The vacant positions include 76 backlog vacancies and 54 posts reserved for candidates from Hyderabad-Karnataka region (Article 371 J).
Prof. Kumar said he would write to the State government on the UGC directive and seek an early nod for issuing the notification. “If we don’t fill up the posts now, we may lose Central grants (in crores) released in the form of various projects such as Institution of Excellence, University with Potential for Excellence, Centre with Potential for Excellence in a Particular Area, RUSA and PURSE initiatives,” he said.
The university was unable to maintain the student-teacher ratio as mandated by the UGC because of shortage of nearly 51% on the teaching end. As per the UGC rule, the ratio should be ideally one teacher for 15 students. It was currently one teacher for 25 students. He said the university, which is going for NAAC certification in January 2020, has a fair chance of getting a higher grade if the appointments were done by then. “We will decide on the selection procedure – on whether to hold entrance examinations and interviews for the candidates. The fee paid by the candidates who had applied when the university had invited applications for teaching posts a few years ago, will be returned as the applications have to be submitted afresh,” Prof. Kumar said.
Responding to the deficit budget of ₹2.98 crore that was presented on Friday for 2019-20, the V-C said a balancing act had been done in the budget to overcome the shortage with the government allocating ₹15 crore less in its bulk grant for the financial year.