New Delhi, 04 February 2020: There are more than 920 universities in India. Most of these universities have been facing acute shortage of teaching or faculty staff.

As per official figure of Ministry of HRD, at present, there are total 1,77,235 sanctioned teaching posts and 3,69,587 sanctioned non teachings posts in various universities across the country.

Surprisingly, 32,581 faculty posts are lying vacant, representing 18.4% of total sanctioned strength. As per the UGC Guidelines, the vacant teaching posts should not overcome 10% of sanctioned strength at any time.

 In case of posts non teachings posts, 93,696 non teaching posts are lying vacant.

While answer a question in the Lok Sabha on 03 February 2020, the HRD Minister Mr Ramesh Pokhriyal ‘Nishank’ has informed the vacant teaching post in universities across the country.

The Minister said that occurrence and filling up of vacancies is a continuous process. “The onus of filling up the posts lies on Central Universities which are autonomous bodies created under Acts of Parliament,” the minister added.

However, the University Grants Commission (UGC) continuously monitors it with Universities. The HRD Minister said that the UGC has prepared the Guidelines for Recruitment of Faculty in Universities, Colleges and Institutions Deemed to be Universities outlining the selection procedure and the time frame for recruitment which has been circulated to all Universities to adhere to the guidelines.

 The universities have also been requested to take steps to ensure that the vacancies in the university as well as in the colleges affiliated to university are filled up at the earliest and also the status of the recruitment process is uploaded on the University Activity Monitoring Portal of UGC.

In order to ensure that studies of students are not affected, the Central Universities undertakes various temporary measures such as hiring ad-hoc faculty, Guest faculty, Contract Faculty and Re-employment of faculty.