Faculty members main stakeholders of the Higher Education sector, they work hard to achieve objectives of programs, department, institution and of society. Quality graduates can only be produced if faculty is competent, experienced and have skills to deliver knowledge required for addressing issues of the market and society. Higher Education Commission (HEC) has developed minimum guidelines for appointment of faculty members in the Universities which is mandatory requirement to be followed by the Higher Education Institutions (HEIs). The minimum requirements were designed by senior educationists while keeping in view the competence required for teaching the core of the domain and carrying out research on the current problems of the domain.
There are two type of faculty appointment criteria one is known as BPS (Basic Pay Scale) and other one is TTS (Tenure Track System)both have major three components i.e. Qualification, Experience, and Research Publications. BPS is traditional appointment system which most of the Universities follow whereas TTS is incentive based appointment system where over and above BPS pay the faculty members are given additional amount in salary for publishing impact factor publications. The faculty members and University administrators have different opinion about effectiveness of both criteria.
The faculty appointment criteria should not be only criteria for selection and promotion there are other factors which may be considered like community engagement, participation in conferences, arranging academic and research events, fund raising, inventions and patents
The role of faculty members is mostly judged from the quality of teaching and research. Both appointment criteria clearly ask for first division in qualification of relevant subject along with teaching and research experience of no. of years for different posts. If someone has suitable number of publications, then he is considered as good researcher as well. Some critics of the HEC policies suggests that there is unfair distribution of teaching assignments and some teachers facilitated to avail research opportunities through different means and others are not given such opportunities. This creates a department with unjust distribution of academic and research resources, and BPS or TTS are further creating class culture in faculty members. Due to different interpretations, the favorites are given benefits while other will be crushed under the rules. The administrative approach in academic matters destroys whole ecosystem of teaching and learning.
While interacting with faculty members one has opined about TTS; “I am sorry to say that this ongoing TTS system has destroyed the academic progress of undergraduate and post-graduate students. Every faculty member is in the race of publishing research publications in research journals and no one is focusing on teaching because of the reason that HEC as well as Universities force the faculty to come with required Number of publications for promotion and nothing else is demanded. Articles are published by any means or ways and without any contribution towards the uplift of science or country economy is the sole demand. During selection board no one asks the faculty about quality of his teaching and fulfilling his credit hours or having some outstanding performance in teaching learning process. As aresult, the quality of education is deteriorated. BS and Master level students are passing without learning any knowledge. ”
The TTS criteria further restricts faculty members from assuming different administrative charges. The BPS faculty member then become Masters and try to make other as a slaves by not allowing to introduce innovation in teaching and research. The power game goes on over the years and division continues.
There are different possible ways of promoting quality teaching and research culture at HEIs. As one of the faculty members opined that “There should be a uniform system for appointment of faculty members where the salary and requirements should be uniformed for all faculty members. There may be an optional criteria for increments and promotion on the performance base for the faculty members. Further, the HEIs with available required resources and research facilities can be opted for TTS where a fixed criteria for incentives can be implemented.”
Moreover, the HEIs may only consider papers having more than 50 citations for promotion or the impact factor number for each teaching post may be defined. Like 20 for assistant professor and 50 for Associate Professor or 100 for Professor. It is also good suggestion that a faculty member with first author of the paper may be given more weightage than his position at 4th or 5th place. The relevance of the papers is also one of the important factor to be looked at.
The faculty appointment criteria should not be only criteria for selection and promotion there are other factors which may be considered like community engagement, participation in conferences, arranging academic and research events, fund raising, inventions and patents etc. The faculty members in India are appointed based on UGC (University Grants Commission) subject test. This helps the institutions to find right person with required level of knowledge in the domain and then their other skills are judged.
It is appropriate to introduce such subject tests in Pakistan through Educational Testing Service (ETC) for selecting only qualified graduates for teaching positions. The Universities may be asked to only appoint those who achieve minimum passing marks in relevant subjects. The policy for appointment should be revisited with participative approach. It is the only way to address the disappointments of faculty members.
The writer is deputy director, Higher Education Commission