New Delhi, June 15: The UGC today decided to roll back another of its proposals to enhance university teachers' workload, recommending to the Centre that tutorials and practical/field work be considered part of direct teaching hours.
In the face of protests from university teachers, the higher education regulator had two weeks ago gone back on its proposal to increase the teaching hours of assistant and associate professors by two hours each per week.
Higher education secretary Vinay Sheel Oberoi today said the UGC decision on reduced workload and academic performance indicators (API), which prescribes a certain score in teaching and research for promotion, would be notified in the official gazette after formal approval.
With the HRD ministry's approval, the UGC had last month amended its regulation on minimum qualification for appointment of teachers, increasing the workload of university and college teachers and changing the API norms. After protests, the government had announced a partial rollback of the workload. But several concerns remained.
Under the earlier norms, professors and associate professors were required to put in 14 hours of teaching per week and an assistant professor 16 hours. The teaching hours included time spent on tutorials and practical classes.
But the amended regulation excluded time spent on tutorials from the direct teaching hours and sought to treat two hours of practical classes as one hour of direct teaching.
Under the new norms, in colleges under Delhi University, about 4,500 ad hoc teachers would have faced the prospect of removal. "There will be no retrenchment in universities and colleges. The workload will not change," Oberoi said.
However, the students' feedback under API will stay. The teachers have been demanding its abolition. The DU Teachers' Association, which has been boycotting evaluation of exam papers for the last three weeks, will meet tomorrow.
"We had demanded rollback of workload and the whole API business. The point-based system of assessing teachers under API norms is meaningless," said Abha Dev Habib, a Duta executive.
