Carelessly administered

Sir, - The stipulations laid by the UGC under the Career Advancement Scheme (CAS) is a contradictory exercise. There are two conditions to get eligibility for getting promotion and moving to higher scale under CAS. They are: completion of certain years of service and certain number of refresher courses.

The second is creating hazards to both teachers and institutions. Teachers are queuing up at the institutions offering refresher courses and undergoing these in a continuous succession. The purpose of a refresher course is thus defeated in several ways.

1. They are attending the course without much time interval with no scope of internalising and practising what is learnt.

2. Teachers are taking refresher courses which are in no way connected to their core specialisation and line of teaching.

3. Teachers about to retire in a month are also attending refresher courses to complete the formality and to become eligible under CAS.

4. As the teachers are away continuously undergoing refresher courses, the routine class work is adversely affected in universities and colleges.

5. To accommodate as many teachers as possible some organisations are conducting refresher courses on a self-financing basis by charging Rs. 1,000 per head and admitting up to 100 candidates. While it is a fact that the quality of learning vastly suffers due to the crowd, there is a rumour that course completion certificates are issued without attendance for a price.

6. Another rumour afloat is that the universities are not taking adequate steps to verify the claims of merit made by the candidates to get benefit under CAS.

7. There is a vast scope for bias in the implementation of CAS. Several institutions are rushing up the implementation to promote candidates of their choice. On the other hand, some institutions are purposely delaying the implementation if they wish to include candidates of their choice who have not completed stipulated years of service.

Is not the CAS a Carelessly Administrated Scheme?

Lalitha Ramakrishnan,

Tirupati

Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Section  : Opinion
Previous : The Samba spy case
Next     : Will Sonia use her authority to usher in a new
           culture?