IIT to come out with quota-based faculty recruitment for senior positions

IITs have posted adverts for quota-based professor recruiting for the first time since they were established. The recruiting procedure, which IITs had control over, has been altered at the Centre’s request and new deadlines have been set.

The education government (previously known as the HRD ministry) has been pressuring centrally sponsored higher education institutions to use the reservation policy in recruiting from 2019. The IITs have deferred to the ministry this time. All institutes, including IITs, have posted advertisements for recruiting SC/ST/OBC/EWS faculty members.

Reservation laws must be followed, according to a letter released by the education ministry in August-end, and vacancies particularly in the Scheduled Caste, Scheduled Tribes, and other backward classes must be filled by September 4, 2022. IITs have a year-long rolling recruiting procedure and the ministry has never imposed a deadline.

Due to a scarcity of engineering doctorate candidates, particularly from the SC/ST/OBC categories – a PhD is the minimum eligibility condition — the time constraint provides a challenge. In a typical year, metro IITs employ roughly 35 faculty members, with 40 in a good year. While some institutes have posted openings for a limited number of posts, others have listed all departments with at least one open position.

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‘Each IIT has followed its own process. We are all recruiting under the mission mode. But while IIT Bombay has advertised for 50 positions, IIT Madras has advertised for 49. Others like IIT Delhi, Roorkee, Hyderabad, Kharagpur have enlisted departments where there are vacancies’, said a dean (faculty).

All of the adverts urge women from low-income families to apply.

In June 2020, a committee established to recommend the implementation of reservations in central education institutes stated that the IITs are national institutions that should be spared from the reservation. It stated that the issue of the reservation should be left to each IIT’s board and if quotas in recruiting were to be established, professor and associate professor positions should be exempted. That report, on the other hand, is collecting dust.