Manpower in Varsities

Two premier institutes of higher education in the Union Territory of Jammu and Kashmir—Central University of Jammu (CUJ) and Central University of Kashmir (CUK)— are grappling with the serious problem of manpower. Going by the official statistics, it appears that little efforts have been made to fill up vacant posts of teaching and non-teaching staff in both the universities during the last five years. To start with, the CUJ was established in 2009 and started functioning in 2011 but it continues to lag behind in infrastructure and manpower. Against the total sanctioned strength of 157 posts of professors, associate professors and assistant professors, more than 50 percent posts are still vacant in the varsity.
There are a total of 66 sanctioned posts of professor and associate professor while the sanctioned positions of assistant professor in the varsity are 91. As on December 1 this, as many as 82 teaching posts are vacant in the university, while the number of non-teaching posts vacant in the CUJ is 38 against the total sanctioned strength of 119. The non-seriousness to fill up the regular posts could be gauged from the fact that only 22 teachers were appointed in the CUJ during the last five years between April 2017 and December 2021. The University authorities had claimed that the institution had advertised vacant teaching positions more than seven times from 2015 to 2018 but the posts remained vacant due to the non-availability of “suitable and eligible candidates”. On the other hand, the situation is more critical in the CUK as far as availability of teaching staff is concerned. The official data showed that there were a total of 118 posts of teachers vacant in the university, while the number of vacant posts of non-teaching staff is 30. Despite having a large number of vacant posts of teachers in the varsity, authorities managed to fill up only 34 posts of teaching faculty in CUK during the last five years. Pertinently, two universities have been getting liberal funding from the Government of India for raising infrastructure and recruiting more manpower. The Central Government has provided an amount of over Rs 150 crore for academic and Rs 75.29 crore for infrastructure purpose to the Central University of Jammu during the last five years. Similarly, the CUK has been provided an amount of Rs 141 crore for academic purposes and Rs 26 crore for infrastructure purposes in the last five years (from 2017-18 to 2021-2022). The authorities must address this issue on priority to maintain the quality of education.