June 28, 2008

India's Top Engineering Schools to Use Faculty Quotas for Lower Classes

New Delhi — Having won the battle to increase student quotas at India’s public universities, the government has now ordered the elite Indian Institutes of Technology to introduce faculty quotas for members of the so-called lower castes and classes, The Times of India reported today.

The order states that nearly half of all faculty positions at the public institutes should be reserved for members of those classes, effective immediately.

Even without quotas, the seven institutes already face faculty shortages of 20 percent to 30 percent, a problem likely to be exacerbated when six more institutes open this year. The order states that the institutes may open faculty posts to members of non-quota groups if the positions cannot be filled within a year.

The newspaper reported that the institutes’ leaders are annoyed by the order, although none was willing to be quoted by name. They feel that the high quality of the institutes’ faculties will be compromised by the new policy.

“Some of the finest people have given up top positions and fat cheques that were offered to them in other parts of the world to come and teach in the IITs, despite the low pay scale that the government offers,” one institute head said. “With reservation in faculty positions, I see a day, not far from now, when the IITs will crumble.”

Another institute chief said there had been no bias against hiring faculty members from disadvantaged classes if they were found meritorious. —Shailaja Neelakantan

Comments

1. Merit less admissions and merit less recruitment is indeed the right combination for an Institution like IIT to go downhill. By the way is the government of India implementing reservations in cabinet formation? One should not preach what one does not practice!!

   — Partha Sarathy    Jun 28, 09:03 AM    #

2. Now that one has to live with reservations in admissions and reservations for recruitment in IITs, its time to explore what mor can be done. One must remember that teachers and students use books in the teaching and learning process. Govt must ensure that the books used also have reservation policy enforced. This will require that so many books in the curriculum are authored by SC/ST, OBC, BC etc. Further each question paper in the exam can also have reservation in the sense that so many questions in an exam by SC/ST/OBC,BC etc. The society at large is eagerly looking forward for all these affirmative actions by the government run by a cabinet and bureacracy also where reservations have been duly enforced.

   — Partha Sarathy    Jun 28, 08:26 PM    #

3. There is no need to say that the vote bank politics is being done well by the present government but how could they deny the fact that the professors make the students who in turn make the country. I am sure a day will come when whole of the general people will leave india and each and every place will be decided by caste creed sex…..

   — Priyanshu Kumar    Jun 30, 01:43 AM    #

4. The entire caste system in India is despicable, as was slavery and Jim Crow style forced segregation in our own country. You don’t fix it, though, with quotas, just as we still have not fixed our problems with affirmative action. These kinds of efforts do more to keep us separated that they do to unite us, which should be the common goal. Quotas, as does affirmative action, forces people to categorize themselves as a hyphenated citizen instead of just a citizen. It creates as many problems as it solves.

   — FB    Jun 30, 09:46 AM    #

5. Govt. of India is making sure that the IITs, top rated in the world, don’t stay that way. At this rate. soon no good company will hire IIT graduates. Oops, they also have to follow the quota system in hiring if they are Indian companies. So no more lucrative jobs for IIT graduates in foreign companies.
   Thanks to Sonia Gandhi controlled govt. —she is taking revenge for not making her PM by destroying India.

   — Sam    Jul 2, 01:03 PM    #

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