Non-Resident Odia Professor Digambar Patra of the American University of Beirut, Lebanon, has urged the State Government not to conduct a unified exam to select teaching professionals in the State universities and rather follow the international pattern where research, experience, exposure and other track records are given priority. Odisha should learn from the National University of Singapore, any other university which has excelled recently to become top 10 to 100 ranked in the world in a short period of time, where faculty recruitment is done based on emerging research field, experience in top world class universities, famous international fellowship, experience with famous cutting edge-research area/lab, etc., he opined.
"The reasons given for a unified exam is unsatisfactory. For only 12 universities, the Odisha Government is feeling too much whereas in Japan, Germany or USA there are thousands of universities which are not conducting recruitment in a centralized manner despite having international applicants across the globe. Moreover, the number of IITs or NITs in India, who are also not conducting a centralised recruitment of faculty, are more than universities in Odisha.
I was told that these days for one position sometimes 1,000 applicants having international experience are received in IITs and they are able to choose the best one," said Prof Patra in an open letter to Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik.
He further stated that university is different from colleges. Education in university is focused on innovation and research. A Statewide recruitment may not be a good solution.
Top universities worldwide hire based on the emerging research field, contemporary field of research area and quality of research publications/citations, high quality research experiences etc.
Rather than career evaluation and competitive exam the way it is conducted for college lecturers in States in India.
Outside India, even bachelor or master’s degree grades/classes,etc., are considered irreverent for top university hiring, which is logical for a candidate having a PhD and couple of years postdoctoral experiences. Indian civil service exam also does not consider career evaluation, he stated. Recruitment should be encouraged to evaluate in the departmental level and then should be scrutinized in hierarchical order in the faculty, Vice Chancellor and Chancellor levels.
For transparency, any doubts in the upper level should be reached out to recheck in the departmental level before selecting the candidate.
To check transparency in research, innovation in different levels, today there are plenty of quantification parameters like Q1/Q2 journals, citations, h-index, number outstanding grants, outstanding fellowship etc. are available, which were not there in the old days.
In addition, to boost productivity in innovation, research, teaching and service to university, a tenure system can be a viable option for university.
Lowly productive Professors may be given 1 to 3-year notice to improve, if no improvement is found, then the University should have the power to terminate its contract or transfer to colleges, Prof Patra said, adding that the centralized system is on line of Bihar model, which is mediocre.