By H. Srikanth
Quality education is one of the important promises that every political party has made during the assembly elections in Meghalaya. Although the hill state was exposed to modern education even before Independence, today education in Meghalaya finds itself at the bottom of the national ladder. Lack of infrastructure is no doubt a matter of concern. Without adequate infrastructure in schools, colleges and universities, it is not possible to extend access to education among the people. All that we talk about the New Education Policy remains rhetoric, as long as the governments don’t invest in public education. Infrastructure alone is not enough. What is more important to improve and sustain the quality of education in the state is to have qualified and dedicated teachers.
Everyone in the country understands the importance of teachers in shaping the lives of the younger generation. Every year on Teachers’ Day, everyone, starting from politicians to school going children, laud their role. But we pay little attention to issues concerning recruitment of teachers. In our country, thousands of schools do not have enough teachers. Thousands of teachers’ positions are vacant and for years, the government does not take measures to fill them up, citing inadequacy of funds. Even where recruitment takes place, the process of recruitment is not always fair. Nepotism, corruption and political interference are reported in school teachers’ recruitment in different states. In most private schools, the school managements hardly give importance to teachers’ qualifications. They are more concerned about how little a salary they can offer while extracting maximum services from the teachers. Meghalaya does not seem to be an exception.
The problem of recruitment does not stop at the school level. In bigger states, recruitment of teachers for colleges is done through state college service commissions. No such commission exists in small states like Meghalaya, where there are very few government run colleges. Most colleges in the state are under private managements. The government sanctioned posts in the colleges are very few. The college managements have to appoint teachers with their own resources. There is no stipulation on the minimum salary of the teachers in private colleges. Salaries of college teachers will be somewhere between Rs 4000 to Rs. 10,000. As an affiliating university, NEHU insists on the minimum qualifications of college teachers, but it has no authority to prescribe minimum salary for teachers. NEHU teachers are involved in recruitment and promotion of teachers in the affiliated colleges. Experience shows that although most teacher representatives try to be fair in the selection process, sometimes they encounter pressure from different quarters to recruit less qualified persons. Different non-academic arguments are floated to justify the recruitment of the less qualified. Such pressures are high when government sanctioned posts are to be filled. The college managements normally respect the decisions of subject experts and the VC’s nominees, but sometimes the college managements come in conflict with the university representatives over teachers’ recruitment. Even persons who know nothing about the subject sit in the selection committees and award marks with no concern for the candidates’ performance in the interview. To avoid confrontation, or for other personal considerations, sometimes the university representatives passively endorse less qualified candidates preferred by the college managements. Consequently, the colleges end up having less qualified teachers. Such compromises will have adverse impacts on the quality of teaching in colleges.
In central universities the recruitment of university teachers has to be done as per the UGC norms. Some universities like JNU, Delhi University, University of Hyderabad, etc., emerged as premier central universities because they could attract and recruit the best as teachers. In contrast, some central universities in the country degenerated into third-grade state universities as they compromised in the recruitment process. In this respect, NEHU has to be appreciated for retaining the national character to this day. The state government and local politicians in the state avoid interfering in the day-to-day working of the university, or in the recruitment of teachers. There are occasional pressures for recruitment of qualified locals as teachers at Assistant Professors level. But even there, it should be acknowledged that the civil society organizations do not insist on overlooking qualifications. As NEHU faculty include both local and non-local teachers, the students are exposed to the best of both. Foresighted former Vice-Chancellors of NEHU, such as Dr. Devenesan, Mrinal Miri and Pramod Tandon took great care in attracting and recruiting competent teachers during their tenures.
However, in recent years NEHU has been facing serious problems. The last open recruitment took place in 2012 when Prof. A.N. Roy was the VC. Since then, there has been no recruitment. Several times advertisements were floated but the interviews were not held. During the period, many senior teachers have retired and many departments are now understaffed. Several courses are run by appointing guest teachers. As guest teachers are appointed only for three or four months, one cannot expect quality. As guest teachers have no security of tenure or fixed pay, one cannot expect them to give their best to the students.
The ranking of NEHU has been a concern of everyone in Meghalaya. The academic performance of NEHU cannot improve unless the vacant teaching positions are filled up. Quality of teaching improves only when there are adequate qualified teachers in all departments. Running a PG or professional course with guest faculty amounts to playing with the fate of the students. Filling vacant faculty positions with qualified and regular teachers is required also for increasing the number and quality of academic publications. When teachers are few and overburdened with teaching and official responsibilities, the departments cannot come out with good research and publications. Appointing qualified teachers with research orientation is necessary for improving the university ranking.
It is heartening to note that NEHU has taken some corrective steps in this direction and hope the university administration holds the interviews for faculty recruitment soon. True, filling all vacancies will not be easy. As NEHU is located in the northeast, one cannot expect world-class intellectuals to apply for faculty positions. In some cases, it may be necessary to overlook some UGC rules and stipulations regarding certain academic requirements. Otherwise, even after conducting interviews, NEHU may not be able to fill in the vacant positions in some departments. What the university needs is to ensure that it recruits the best among the applicants and fills in as many positions as possible. If we miss the bus this time, God alone knows when the next advertisement will come up and the next recruitment will take place.
To sum up, the quality of education, whether at school, college or university levels, depends on the quality of teachers appointed. Hence, everyone in Meghalaya should insist on a fair process of recruitment. Members who sit in the selection committee should rise above social prejudices. Merit is not the monopoly of any members belonging to a particular community, gender, region, religion or ideology. Teaching positions are not freebies to be distributed among one’s kith and kin. A bad and incompetent teacher will ruin generations of students and become a liability to the institution. It is therefore necessary to ensure that there is a consensus among different stakeholders – the government in power, political parties, school / college managements, civil society organizations, the university – on how the recruitment of teachers should take place, and how the concerns of both quality and equity need to be addressed.