Of the total appointment, the existing vacancy for the post of 4,500 assistant professors in various colleges will also be filled shortly. At present, there are 106 government Arts and Science College functioning and catering education to around 3 lakh students every year.

A senior official from the Higher Education Department told DT Next that this year about 1.2 lakh first-year students would be admitted to various government and government-aided colleges against last year’s figure of 1.02 lakh students.

Stating that the intake capacity of the State-run colleges has been increased to 20% due to increase in the new admissions, he said that about 10,000 teaching staff at various capacities is expected to be recruited. Pointing out that total of 1,093 assistant professors was recruited through Teachers Recruitment Board as of 2019-20, the official said: “The recruitment board is already in the process of recruiting 2,331 assistant professors and the rest, who are in the waiting list will also be appointed subsequently.”

He said to productively utilise the excess staff (both teaching and non-teaching) available at various State-run universities, 698 professors and 100 non-teaching staff will be re-deployed at various colleges on agreement basis for three years. “At the beginning of 2020, the government already re-deployed 30 assistant professors,” he said.

“Since shift system was introduced in colleges, the government also sanctioned as many as 2,423 posts of guest lecturer under shift-1 system this year till these vacancies are filled through the recruitment board,” he said, adding that similarly, under the shift-2 system the government has sanctioned to recruit 1,661 guest lecturers.