UGC Pay Review Committee Recommendations for University and College teachers - 20% Pay Hike, Performance linked Promotion etc.
New Delhi, Feb. 22: The UGC today recommended a 20 per cent pay hike for university and college teachers.
A
performance-linked promotion system has been suggested with stress on
research. The retirement age will remain unchanged at 65.
The
recommendations, made by a five-member committee, have to be accepted by
the HRD ministry. If approved, the hike will be the first such revision
in more than a decade and cover nearly 30,000 teachers in central
universities and over four lakh in state varsities and colleges.
The
panel has suggested that the new salaries be paid with retrospective
effect from January 2016. The UGC cleared the report without changes.
According
to the recommendations, a teacher's starting package will be revised by
a multiplier of 2.72, applied to the basic salary and another component
called academic grade pay (AGP).
For instance, a directly
recruited professor who gets around Rs 43,000 as basic salary, Rs 10,000
as AGP and dearness allowance now will be entitled to a basic salary of
Rs 1.44 lakh which would subsume the present dearness allowance.
The
Seventh Pay Commission, whose report was accepted last year for civil
servants and other central staff, had used the 2.72 multiplier.
The
last revision for teachers in 2006 had put their package higher than
that of civil servants at the entry level. Teachers may continue to
retain the edge even under the revised structure, sources said.
Furqan
Qamar, the secretary-general of the Association of Indian Universities
(AIU), said university and college salaries had been kept higher to
attract talent.
On promotions, the current determinants are
indicators like teaching and research output. The UGC panel, headed by
Prof. V.S. Chauhan, has suggested that more stress be laid on quality
research, such as papers published in reputable journals, the sources
said.
The UGC has forwarded to all central universities a finance
ministry order suggesting the Centre will bear no more than 70 per cent
of the additional expenses arising out of the revised pay. This order
covers autonomous institutions, including central universities.
The
higher education regulator has asked the 40-odd central universities to
specify how much internal resources they can generate, indicating the
possibility of a hike in tuition fees.
The new pay proposals are
not binding on state universities, which have to fund the higher
salaries from their own resources. But they have usually adopted such
suggestions in the past.
The Union HRD ministry has set up a
separate committee for salary revision of teachers in technical
institutions like the IITs and the IIMs.
Read at:
The Telegraph