The Central government has decided to put on hold the plan to make PhD the minimum qualification for recruitment of assistant professors this year, in view of the COVID-19 pandemic. The Ministry of Education has lifted the criteria temporary to allow universities to fill the vacant post.
Sources of the Education Ministry told ANI, "Around 10,000 posts vacant in the Central universities including teaching and non-teaching staff and the ministry had given instruction to fill up this vacancy soon."
Speaking to the media, Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan said, "The ministry has put a temporary hold on PhD for assistant professor recruitment and PhD would not be mandatory for this post as of now but has not been cancelled."
The move is expected to fill vacant teaching posts across higher education institutes faster.
"Education Ministry had received several requests from candidates who wanted to apply for the post but were unable to fulfil their PhD requirement, asking to postpone the 2018 guidelines," Education Ministry sources said.
The University Grants Commission (UGC) in 2018 set the criteria for recruitments for entry-level posts at universities and colleges. It had given a three-year window to candidates to complete their PhDs and asked all universities and colleges to start applying the criteria for recruitment from the 2021-22 academic session.
Due to the pandemic, many candidates could not complete their PhDs and were appealing to the government to relax the eligibility this year, since universities have been shut and research activities suffered due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
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