Recruitment and Selection of Teaching Staff in Indian Universities

I.I Introduction Managing people is as old as human civilization but perhaps it is one of the most complicated and uncontrolled areas for CEOs of almost each and every organization ,so universities are not exceptions. A university is built and grows around the quality of its faculty.The universities that have world class ambitions will need to acquire and nurture quality faculty because this will be only thing which will distinguish one university from another. Perhaps due this realization , many of the old Indian universities could attract and retain the best available people from anywhere and some of the university departments were known by those people. Interestingly, while the Sixth pay commission could very well take care of the salary structure of the teaching fraternity especially at higher education, though without making much distinction between Associate Professor and Professor and a faculty working in colleges and universities but it was no doubt very lucrative to attract talents to teaching at higher education. While this could solve the long standing grievances of the community but there is no visible changes in different other areas in terms of managing people which are essential for universities to be world class universities, hence the present article is a modest attempt to highlight: i.What are the missing aspects HRM in managing especially teaching staff in Indian universities; and ii. What are the interventions needed to overcome these lapses so that our mission of higher education, especially at university level can be achieved. In fact, Human Resource Management, as one of the functional areas of management deals with the functions staring from recruitment to retirement people in any organization. In order to establish stability and consistency the universities have Acts and regulations which are largely based on guidelines of the appropriate governments. Education being in the concurrent list of our constitution, the policies and rules governing teaching staff management varies from state to state in case of state universities and in case of central universities they have their separate Acts enacted in the Parliament. However, one of the major factor which influence the manpower policy is the guidelines of UGC and HRD , which changes from time to time. Universities are temples of higher learning and always it requires the best talents to keep its flag up for all time to come. But when we look at various aspects of management people be it recruitment, selection, induction, development, performance appraisal, welfare , compensation and/or post retirement benefits/ facilities one can find a lot of mismanagement and

unprofessional dealing for which perhaps the universities are unable to achieve their effectiveness. As a result, it may become one of the reasons for which non of our Indian universities are coming in the list 300 best universities of the world. 1.2 Faculty Recruitment Faculties at all levels and in all departments are the one of the strongest pillars of a university. In fact a university is known for its faculties research and teaching. Whenever the faculties are recruited utmost care and concern need to be given by the university not only to avoid legal complexities which develops due to irregularity in recruitment but it is being the entry point, all efforts should be made not to allow the wrong candidate to enter into the system for two four decade and destabilize the system and destroy the future of several future generation students. In fact recruitment is a process to discover the sources of applicants and employ adequate measures to attract those potential job seekers to apply in large number to facilitate selection of efficient candidates. Two important decisions are taken in recruitment program. One is about the sources of from where the competent and qualified candidates will be available and second how they will be intimated about the vacancy. In case of universities, faculty recruitments are done but the efforts which a professionally managed corporate house takes , similar care and concern is hardly found in universities. A university needs both a teacher and a researcher in a candidate which is not on the basis of the qualification alone but with qualification, the close affiliation of the candidate with university or the institute, they are exposed to the teaching and research culture of a university teaching department, so a regular student seems to be more appropriate. Therefore efforts should be made to give a wide intensive coverage of these vacancies research institutes and centers ,even if needed and possible through word of mouth. Even though there exist criticism of inbreeding but many a time the students working in the same institute/ departments can be encouraged to apply for the vacancies and their selection will be based on their performance in the various stages of selection process. Moreover, universities need to have universal character, therefore there should be wide publicity of the vacancies at national and international level in appropriate media in right places , be it news papers, magazines, journals, university websites or any other technique but which are being referred by the scholars and it should be as intensive as possible so that the potential candidates can see and should be motivated to apply for it, which is being not seriously taken care of by the university in the name of shortage of fund and other difficulties. Rather often is criticized that advertisements are made to in such manner that it could be seen by a few. Many universities consider just as a formality/ ritual and try to save money at the cost of failing to attract a sizable number of appropriate candidates which ultimately paralyzes

the selection process. Rarely any university makes an evaluation of the effectiveness of their recruitment program, therefore, largely the selection of candidates for academic positions is now affected by inadequate and inappropriate number and quality of desirable applicants for different position in Indian universities. Once the applications of applicants reaches the university office looking after this function, recruitment program ends there. Since recruitment is a positive process and every candidate irrespective of his eligibility may consider fit to apply, therefore, the number of applications are large in number. 1.3 Selection of Faculty Selection is a negative process and every applicant has every possibility to rejected at any stage of selection. Therefore exiting policy and procedure for selection of faculty positions need to be revisited to strengthen our selection process so that right persons can be appointed for right positions at right time in order to avoid the inconveniences caused due to non existence of adequate faculty in the university departments . Screening of applications is carried out by different committees constituted for different departments consists of Head/Dean and representatives from different reserve category, if the posts reserve. In fact, in HR practice, it is the preliminary screening in which unwanted applicants are eliminated due to failure of the candidates to fulfill some of the criteria laid down in the advertisement. It can be on the basis of the qualification, experience, research publications, percentage of marks in qualifying examinations etc. 1.5 Conclusions Paradoxically, while there is massive unemployment in the country, but when it comes to filling vacant positions in universities, right people are not available in right number with right aptitude and attitude, for which many a time wrong people enter into the system to stay in one department for three to four decades and retire from the system without contributing significantly both to the academic and non academic activities of the universities. Even some of the sometimes in some universities found that they take part more in university politics than academic activities. We have to be above local outlook. No doubt state universities are largely funded by the states but there should not be local/regional considerations and pressure and policy in appointment of teaching staff than quality and competencies. It should never be compromised to destroy the future of local budding youth.