Pros and cons of third amendment to UGC Regulations, 2010

On May 10^th, 2016 UGC published a Gazette Notification that promulgates third amendment to UGC Regulations of 2010 governing minimum qualifications for appointment of teachers and other academic staff in universities and colleges and measures for the maintenance of standards in higher education. Though third amendment mainly concerns changes in qualification for direct recruitment to the posts of Assistant Professors and exemption from the requirement of eligibility condition of NET/SLET/SET for recruitment subject to certain conditions for those candidates who completed their Ph.D. degrees prior to July 11, 2009, it also amended Academic Performance Indicators (API) for Career Advancement Scheme (CAS) promotions for Assistant Professors, Associate Professors and Professors and for direct recruitment of Associate Professors and Professors in universities and colleges.

Regulations governing recruitment of Assistant Professors

Several regulations passed by the UGC in the past have been contradictory and enigmatic with no logic or justification whatsoever. For example, to ensure and maintain the quality of Ph.Ds, UGC developed a set of regulations in 2009, and executed the same with retrospective effect. Consequently newly appointed Assistant Professors, having obtained their Ph.D. degrees before 2009 , who according to UGC rules were entitled to get several non-compoundable increments, were denied the same. They were asked to justify that their Ph.D was in accordance with UGC Regulations of 2009. One fails to understand how a Ph. D awarded in 2003 can comply with the regulations framed in 2009. While excellence and innovation need not be linked to perks, these kind of regulations definitely have a negative impact on the performance of those affected.

Similarly when UGC regulations 2009 were notified, it was mandated that only those holding Ph.D. degrees in accordance with standards set in 2009 are eligible for any fresh teaching posts. As per news reports, this rendered several thousand Ph.D. holders across India potentially ineligible for teaching jobs for the simple reason that when these people were pursuing their Ph.D. degrees, the rules setting new standards were not in place. Suddenly their Ph.Ds ran the risk of becoming invalid. Later UGC had to enforce the new rules prospectively to overcome this anomaly that had left large number of teaching faculty positions unfilled for quite a long time across India. These regulations had necessitated that even those applying for adhoc posts must hold Ph.Ds. It is common knowledge that adhoc posts are created by universities to attract teachers when they are unable to find suitable faculty meeting qualifications required for the regular posts. Now with Ph.D being stipulated for even adhoc posts, universities found it difficult to appoint any teachers for these positions, even on stop-gap basis.

UGC Regulations 2010 that mandated NET/SLET/SET for fresh recruitment as Assistant Professors in colleges and universities and necessitated Ph.D. degree completion in accordance with UGC Regulations of 2009 halted fresh appointments causing dearth of teaching faculty in educational institutions across India. Third amendment of May, 2016 sought to rectify this anomaly by laying down certain conditions for those candidates who completed their Ph.D. degrees prior to July 11, 2009 i.e., when UGC Regulations of 2009 were notified.  Third amendment of 2016 envisages that the candidates, who have been awarded a Ph. D. degree in accordance with UGC Regulations, 2009 or the subsequent Regulations if notified by the UGC, shall be exempted from the requirement of the minimum eligibility condition of NET/SLET/SET for appointment of Assistant Professor or equivalent positions in Universities/Colleges/Institutions. Further, the award of degrees to candidates registered for the M.Phil/Ph.D. programme prior to July 11, 2009, shall be governed by the provisions of then existing ordinances/by-laws/regulations of the institution awarding the degree and the Ph.D. candidates shall be exempted from the requirement of the minimum eligibility condition of NET/SLET/SET for recruitment and appointment as Assistant Professor or equivalent positions in Universities/Colleges/Institutions subject to the fulfillment of certain conditions like (a) Ph.D. degree of the candidate awarded in regular mode only (b) Evaluation of the Ph.D. thesis by at least two external examiners (c) Candidate had published two research papers out of which at least one in a refereed journal from out of his/her Ph.D. work (d) Candidate had presented two papers in seminars/conferences from out of his/her Ph.D. work (e) Open Ph.D. viva-voce of the candidate had been conducted. (a) to (e) as above are to be certified by the Vice- Chancellor/ Pro-Vice-Chancellor/ Dean (Academic Affairs).

Fault lines in API based performance assessment of teachers

From the very beginning there have been stark discrepancies in API based performance assessment system devised by the UGC in the year 2010. While it envisaged to accord API scores for publishing papers in journals, presenting papers in conferences, publishing books or book chapters and completing research projects, there was no allocation in category-III of PBAS for undertaking peer review of papers and books by teachers, for attending a conference or seminar without presenting a paper, for being a co-author in a paper that is presented by someone else, for chairing or co-chairing a scientific session during scientific meetings, for attending expert committee meetings or evaluating research projects submitted to funding agencies and for being appointed as a member of editorial and review boards of various journals. These vital academic activities had been blatantly ignored while fixing API scores. Though third amendment regulations of 2016 have made new API allocations for activities like winning a national or international award or fellowship, yet the all important activities mentioned above continue to remain unaccounted which is a gross injustice with teachers who spend considerable amount of their precious time in these significant academic activities. UGC had constituted an expert committee in September, 2015 under the chairmanship of Prof. Arun Nigavekar, former Chairman, UGC with a view to improve API score based performance assessment and make it more rational both at the entry point and during career advancement of teachers. It is very unfortunate that some of the ambiguities and discrepancies in API score allocation still persist after the recommendations of this committee have been notified in the official Gazette of India.

Under clause 3.9 of the UGC Regulations, 2010 it was specified that, “the period of time taken by candidates to acquire M.Phil. and/or Ph.D. degree shall not be considered as teaching/research experience to be claimed for appointment to the teaching positions”. This very clause adversely affected the prospects of promotion of a huge number of Assistant Professors across India whose plea was that “the period of time taken by the candidates to acquire M.Phil. and/or Ph.D. degree” should imply the period when an in-service teacher working on substantive basis in a university was on study leave for pursuing his research degree and not the period when he was actively teaching in his parent department while simultaneously pursuing his M.Phil. and/or Ph.D. It took UGC six years to clear the ambiguity and confusion in this clause. While the original regulations were ratified by UGC in its 468^th meeting held on February 23, 2010, it was after six years and 44 meetings of the Commission when UGC in its 512^th Meeting held on February 4, 2016 issued a clarification that “the period of active service spent on pursuing Research Degree i.e. for acquiring Ph.D. degree simultaneously without taking any kind of leave may be counted as teaching experience for the purpose of direct recruitment/promotion to the post of Associate Professor and above”. During the interim period of six years a huge number of teachers across India suffered academically, mentally, financially for no fault of theirs and had to pay through their nose for the incompetence of policy makers at the helm of affairs.

UGC brought in second amendment to its Regulations of 2010 in June, 2013 only to add more ambiguity, confusion and chaos to the already existing vague regulations. This time UGC introduced capping of API scores claimed by the applicants for direct recruitment as well as CAS (career advancement scheme) promotions under various sub-categories of Category III of PBAS (performance based assessment system). These sub-categories include research papers, books, research projects, research guidance, conference and seminar attendance. Thankfully third amendment has scrapped this harsh provision of second amendment altogether that had done more harm than good to both teaching and research, much to the relief and respite of suffering university teachers whose promotions were held up for several years on this account. A good riddance indeed! Third amendment has retained only one ceiling under category III(E)ii for invited lectures and oral presentations. The API score under this sub-category has been restricted to 20% of the minimum score fixed for Category III for any assessment period. The quantification of teachers’ performance using such stringent criteria has actually pushed teachers into a ‘rat race’ for gathering points for the sake of recruitment and promotion, and has forced them to mechanically turn into score building machines rather than concentrating on their basic responsibilities towards teaching and students.

Increase in weekly teaching workload

Previously UGC Regulations of 2010 had specified a workload of 16 hours per week involving direct teaching-learning process for Assistant Professors and 14 hours for Associate Professors and Professors. These Regulations had also specified that a minimum of 6 hours per week may be allocated to research activities of a teacher.  However third amendment of 2016 has specified a workload of 18 hours for Assistant Professors, 16 hours for Associate Professors and 14 hours for Professors in addition to 6 hours per week for tutorials, remedial classes, seminars, administrative responsibilities, innovation and updation of course contents for all the three categories of university teachers. This abrupt rise in workload seems to be neither reasonable nor justified. Third amendment of 2016 does not allocate 6 hours per week to research activities as envisaged in 2010 Regulations. However it is mentioned that those teachers who supervise the research of five or more Ph.D. students at a time shall be allowed a reduction of two hours per week in direct teaching hours.

It would have been preferable to allocate a specific time duration per week towards research activities irrespective of the number of Ph.D. scholars that a teacher is supervising at a time. 18/16/14 hours per week as envisaged in third amendment includes lectures/practicals/project supervision, wherein two hours of practicals/project supervision have to be treated as equivalent to only one hour of lecture. It is beyond one’s comprehension why two hours of actual contact/teaching-learning process during practicals or project supervision has to be reduced to only one hour. This kind of reduction is usually done for the calculation of number of credits in the choice-based credit system of teaching but not for calculating actual contact hours of teaching. Further it is not clear why the weekly teaching workload has been increased by two hours for Assistant and Associate Professors whereas the hours spent on examination duties such as invigilation, question paper setting, evaluation of answer scripts and tabulation of results are over and above the prescribed direct teaching hours and are an integral part of overall teaching workload of 40 hours per week as per the third amendment to UGC Regulations of 2010.

On May 26^th, 2016 Press Information Bureau, Govt. of India released a press note stating that the Union Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD) has reviewed the third amendment of UGC Regulations, 2010 and issued a direction to the UGC under Section 20(I) of the UGC Act, 1956 to keep the overall workload of Assistant Professor and Associate Professors/Professors unchanged and in accordance with earlier regulations i.e., not less than 40 hours a week for 180 teaching days. It also directed that the direct teaching –learning hours to be devoted by Assistant Professors (16 hours) and Associate Professors/Professors (14 hours) shall also remain unchanged. Thus MHRD has asked the UGC to roll back its amendment in relation to teaching workload within a span of just twenty days. That reflects poorly upon the amount of homework/critical appraisal done by UGC before bringing out new regulations. 

Third amendment regulations of 2016 seek to divide the actual number of hours spent by a teacher during an academic year under category-II in professional development, co-curricular and extension activities by a factor of 10. Thus in order to score the maximum permissible 45 API points under category-II, a teacher has to spend a total of 450 (45 x 10) hours in each academic year of 30-40 weeks duration on these activities that sums up to one and a half hour each day over and above his daily teaching, research and administrative workload as detailed under category-I of PBAS. Practically speaking isn’t it too taxing for a teacher to devote so much time daily to these activities? Something seems to be terribly wrong with the mathematics of API calculation. It is pertinent to mention that as per UGC Regulations of 2010, there have to be a minimum of 30 weeks of actual teaching in a 6-day week, another 12 weeks having been devoted to admissions, examinations, sports, cultural and co-curricular activities, another 8 weeks for vacations and 2 weeks attributed to public holidays. Since we avail a total of 10-12 weeks for summer and winter vacations during the year, we can use 40 weeks (totaling 280 hours) for activities listed in category-II that require a total of 450 hours during a year for maximum permissible API score of 45, given the fact that total number of hours devoted to these activities in a year has to be divided by 10.

Silent regulations

UGC regulations continue to remain silent about the research guidance provided to the students for their M.Pharm./MBA/MCA/LLM/M.Ed. dissertations. This is yet another injustice to such supervisors who have to supervise several PG scholars every year for their year-long research projects that culminate in compilation of a dissertation and at the end of the day no weightage is given to these supervisors. However one good change made in third amendment regulations of 2016 relates to increase in API score for each Ph.D. thesis submitted from 7 to 10 and for each thesis awarded from 10 to 15. This was a much needed change. But the API score awarded to a book chapter continues to be too meager. For a book chapter published in an international edition, API score is only 10 and for national edition score is only 5 and if there are two or more authors for the chapter, this score has to be shared equally among all of them. So what does each author get, peanuts?  Worst part is that earlier regulations in this regard had clearly mentioned that the score needs to be equally shared among all authors, but surprisingly third amendment has chosen to remain silent on that, leaving enough scope for yet another ambiguity and confusion. Even for the books per se, third amendment allocates an “API score of 30 per book for single author” in case of an international edition and “a score of 20 per book for single author” in case of a national edition. What happens if there are multiple authors in either case remains unclear and has to be eventually left to the whims of scissor-happy officials at the helm of individual universities. Instead of using the term “single author”, term “each author” should have been used.

Anomaly in distribution of API score among first, second and the remaining authors of a journal paper has also been rectified in the third amendment regulations of 2016. Now the first and principal/corresponding author/supervisor/mentor would share equally 70% of the total points and the remaining 30% would be shared equally by all other authors. However the paradoxical and needless practice of getting papers already published in reputed journals re-evaluated by the experts at the time of promotions from state 3 to 4 and stage 4 to 5 has still not been abolished which is a big omission since the papers that have already undergone rigorous process of peer review by reputed and well established journals hardly need to be revaluated again by the experts and this only leads to wastage of time and consequent delay in timely promotion of teachers, moreso when API score has already been allocated to published papers on the basis of indexing/peer review by referees/impact factors and other such parameters.

This time UGC has decided to notify its own list of refereed journals and publishers with a view to fix the API scores in a more reliable manner and leave no scope for score allocation to papers published in paid substandard journals that have particularly surfaced in huge numbers after API based assessment system came to the fore or to books published by sleazy publishers. But how comprehensive and inclusive the list shall be and how much time UGC will take to notify the list remains to be one of the biggest dilemmas of third amendment since any inordinate delay in its notification could potentially impede the process of final settlement of pending as well as fresh promotion cases of teachers. Hope none of the quality journals or standard publishers are left out in the process. Collecting feedback about teaching quality from students who have put in more than 75% attendance in each course as envisaged in the third amendment is a welcome step, however any likelihood of confounding bias in such evaluation needs to be scientifically and systematically removed before incorporating that feedback in the performance assessment of teachers during their promotions. Furthermore earlier thrust on research at the cost of teaching has also been rectified and equal weightage has been accorded to teaching and research activities in the third amendment. Other modalities of UGC Regulations, 2010 and their fall-outs on the quality standards of higher education have already been discussed in detail in an earlier article by this author in this very newspaper.

Conclusion

API based performance assessment system seeks to promote a score-hunting attitude among teachers. It promotes mechanization rather than creativity. Nobody is against performance-based appraisal but this should not come at the cost of teaching, which has to be the primary focus. Teachers working in colleges and universities  all over India are feeling stressed and subdued on account of flaws in UGC regulations particularly API based assessment system since these flaws are posing a serious threat to their academic progress and are demoralizing them besides leading to unhealthy competition in educational institutions. Nobody is against incorporation of quantitative or qualitative measures for assessing the performance of teachers but they need to be flexible, rational and just rather than stringent, impracticable, irrational and unjust. What kind of standards are these that are not only demoralizing the teaching community but inciting unhealthy competition, infighting, dissuasion and dissidence among teaching faculty. In this manner desired objectives of UGC regulations can never be achieved and these regulations will continue to prove counter-productive. MHRD, UGC and the universities need to take all possible measures, initiatives and urgent steps to rectify the errors in UGC regulations, remove all ambiguities, discrepancies, anomalies and confusions in them so that they do not become an unnecessary hurdle in the promotion of teachers. UGC Regulations, 2010 on the whole need to overhauled altogether.

(Author teaches at the Dept of Pharmaceutical Sciences, University of Kashmir and can be reached at ishaqgeer@gmail.com Views expressed are his own)