IIT faculty may teach after retirement to boost quality

NEWDELHI: The Centre is contemplating bringing in a policy for re-appointment of faculty members of IITS and NITS for a period of at least five years after their retirement to address the problem of vacancies and ensure quality.

The move is aimed at utilising the services of the best of the faculty members of these premier technical institutes for the benefit of students.

“We are working on a suggestion to utilise the services of the faculty members after their retirement so that they can teach for at least another five years,” human resource development (HRD) minister Prakash Javadekar told reporters at a press conference on Thursday.

Both the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITS) and National Institutes of Technology (NITS) have a provision in their statutes to re-appoint the retired faculty members with the approval of the President.

“But this provision is rarely used. In the last two-and-a-half years, just two faculty members were re-appointed for teaching at the IITS under this provision after they retired at the age of 65,” said a senior official in the ministry.

To make the provision more effective, the ministry is keen on bringing a policy for re-appointment of the retired faculty members of the IITS and NITS who have made “exemplary contributions” to teaching during their service, they added.

Addressing the press conference, the HRD minister said the Prime Minister’s Research Fellows (PMRF) scheme, approved by the Union Cabinet for the students of Indian Institute of science (IISC), IITS and other centrally funded technical institutes on Wednesday, was aimed at reversing “the brain drain” into “the brain gain.”

He said the fellowship scheme would provide “adequate” financial assistance and research grants to the students of the IITS and NITS.

The Btech students to be selected under the scheme will get direct admission to PHD programmes at the IITS and IISC.

The PMRF scheme will offer fellowship to 1,000 Btech students of IITS and NITS every year, starting from the academic session of 2018-19.

It will also offer grants for research in “frontier areas” of science and technology.

“These frontier areas for research will include artificial intelligence, robotics and nano technology among others. We will come up with an advertisement inviting applications from the students for research on a list of frontier areas soon,” Javadekar added.