PhD has been made mandatory for recruitment of teachers in universities from 2021-22 and cracking the National Eligibility Test (NET) would not be accepted as the only eligibility criteria, Union Minister Prakash Javadekar said today. However, masters degree with NET or PhD would continue to be the minimum eligibility criteria for direct recruitment in colleges, a senior official said.
Currently, those who hold PhD degree or are NET qualified with masters degree are eligible to apply for assistant professor, the entry level position, in universities. Announcing the new regulations of the University Grants Commission (UGC), Javadekar said Academic Performance Indicators (API), which was resisted by many as research was made compulsory for college teachers, has been scrapped so that they could focus on teaching students.
"The whole effort is to improve quality of higher education and to attract and retain the best talent in the country. All the incentives of earlier regulations have been maintained, but the API for college teachers has been removed. Now college teachers would not have to mandatorily do research but will have to essentially concentrate and give better education to undergraduate students," he told reporters here. PTI
