Mohit Ul Alam
The proposed 8th national pay-scale has created a furore among the public university teachers as they deem that the suggested salary structure has neither protected their pay benefits nor defined their status. The University Teachers’ Associations Federation, representing the teachers associations of 37 public universities, has raised this issue with several wings of the government and pointed out that the recommendations of the Pay and Service Commission 2013 have been modified by the Secretary Committee in which it appears that the position of the university teachers recognised in the 7th national pay-scale has been downgraded by two steps in the 8th pay-scale, thus hurting the sentiment of the teachers.
The Vice-Chancellors’ Association, known in Bangla as Vishwabidyalay Parishad, has also responded to the grievances of the teachers and in a meeting with the honourable Education Minister on 8 July the Association members voiced their support for the logical demands of the university teachers. While speaking on behalf of the university teachers, the Vice Chancellors, all of whom are basically university teachers too, observed with great anxiety that when the present Honourable Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina and the Honourable Education Minister Nurul Islam Nahid, MP, are both widely known for their interest in the growth and flourishing of the higher studies across the country, this kind of constraining and prestige demeaning pay-structure cannot have been approved by them, and so they speculated that a section of the influential bureaucrats might have played a black hand in approving a pay-scale inimical to the university teachers. So they smelled a conspiracy somewhere that would not only harm the university teachers but would also tarnish the image of the government, which by all evidence is a pro-education government.
As the discontentment over the pay-scale issue is increasing and programmes such as protest processions, forming human-chains and symbolic abstention from classes by teachers manifest it, some comparative reports show that in the subcontinent all other countries have either a separate pay-scale for university teachers or, if not, an enhanced grade of salary with other tangible benefits. In Sri Lanka, there exists a separate pay-scale for university teachers, and a lecturer begins his career at the university with a monthly basic salary of Rupees 39,754 and highest Rupees 48,445. For a senior professor the monthly salary range is between Rs. 67,100 lowest and Rs. 87,775 highest. In addition, they get extra incentives every month in the form of lifestyle expenses, Rs. 7,800, and for all teachers there is allocation for 80 to 90 percent of the basic salary as academic incentives. In addition, they also receive research allowance, 35%, and special allowance, 20%, of the basic salary. Pakistan also maintains a separate pay-scale phenomenally high, where a university assistant teacher gets monthly lowest Rs. 1,04,000 and highest Rs. 2,11,250, and a professor’s monthly salary ranges from lowest Rs. 2,34,000 to highest Rs. 4,05,600. In India, there doesn’t exist a separate pay-scale for university teachers, but after joining the university each teacher gets a number of allowances in addition to their basic salary and other fringe benefits. India runs a highly research-oriented national educational programme, and, therefore, immediately after joining the university, a university teacher receives a onetime grant for research ranging from Rs. Two lakh lowest to Rs. Five lakh highest.
The above comparative statistics provides an opportunity to realise how importantly is the higher education recognised by our neighbouring countries, and this is all the more reason that we pay heed to the demand for a separate pay-scale by the university teachers.
The present scandalised status offered in the proposed 8th national pay-scale shouldn’t be seen as done by some whimsical sleight of hand, but rather the formation of such a negative attitude towards university teachers has been the result of a long-grown pathetic scenario in this sector. Historical data will support this view that since long university education has been politicised along the party-line politics, which is different from politicising higher education along the ideological line, say, for example, the spirit of the Liberation War. Ideally, politics is a matter of ideology, which should impact an institution beyond the physical individual identity of the people who carry that ideology. But in reality that higher ideal is compromised by a distorted vision that an ideology is identifiable with the physical entity of the individual, in this case in the persona of the individual teacher.
Thus the abstract and intangible dimension of the ideology is wrongly deemed as expressible in the tangible form of an individual teacher. Thus in pursuit of spreading an ideology, university authorities, being also influenced by external political pressure, have recruited not teachers but party-political agents, and that in a large way by recruiting inferior applicants sacrificing the brighter ones. In some cases, nepotism and shady dealings have also resulted in inferior recruitment. In short, merit has been sacrificed to biased allegiances.
Now the compromise with merit can be digestible in other job sectors, perhaps, but never ever in higher education, where an inferior person recruited as a university teacher may cause harm to the institution for nearly as many as four decades. Teaching is an intellectual profession, and so its impact is both invisible and far reaching, but, which, unfortunately, is not always sensed by a university authority keen on recruiting a party political agent with inferior academic records rather than a suitable candidate fit to teach at the university level.
This practice being followed for decades together has created a negative impression about the quality of the university teachers in the greater society, where in numerous social transactions everybody, whoever he may be, comes to be tested for his real worth. Thus in numerous public forums university teachers have been seen to be less qualified than their official tags demanded. University professors have become cheaper by the dozen. Most of them become professors without any significant research publication in their chosen fields. The negative image has created a negative impact on the body of the people who fix the pay-structure of the nation. So university teachers have fallen into a vicious cycle. Compromised recruiting system, coupled with poor pay structure, has failed to allure the more brilliant students to university teaching, and being poorer for that other competing agencies, say the bureaucracy, have grown a false notion that a university teacher’s job is tantamount to ordinary office time keeping from 9 to 5.
This is where the pain resides, the failure by the competent bodies to realise the significance and relevance of higher education in a growing society that Bangladesh is. The failure also includes an incorrect (rather perverted) view that a nation can grow without higher education. Otherwise, why would the university teachers, the carriers of higher education, be falling into such ignoble fold?
If a separate pay-scale for the university teachers is not feasible at the moment, I suggest that they are paid a number of increments with their basic pay at the time of joining in any rung. Maybe, a lecturer should be given five increments, followed by an assistant professor to be paid six increments, an associate professor seven, a professor eight, and a vice-chancellor nine increments. Correspondingly, with their basic pay fixation, other allowances would be given on a percentage basis. Let’s see. . . .
The Vice-Chancellors’ Association, known in Bangla as Vishwabidyalay Parishad, has also responded to the grievances of the teachers and in a meeting with the honourable Education Minister on 8 July the Association members voiced their support for the logical demands of the university teachers. While speaking on behalf of the university teachers, the Vice Chancellors, all of whom are basically university teachers too, observed with great anxiety that when the present Honourable Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina and the Honourable Education Minister Nurul Islam Nahid, MP, are both widely known for their interest in the growth and flourishing of the higher studies across the country, this kind of constraining and prestige demeaning pay-structure cannot have been approved by them, and so they speculated that a section of the influential bureaucrats might have played a black hand in approving a pay-scale inimical to the university teachers. So they smelled a conspiracy somewhere that would not only harm the university teachers but would also tarnish the image of the government, which by all evidence is a pro-education government.
As the discontentment over the pay-scale issue is increasing and programmes such as protest processions, forming human-chains and symbolic abstention from classes by teachers manifest it, some comparative reports show that in the subcontinent all other countries have either a separate pay-scale for university teachers or, if not, an enhanced grade of salary with other tangible benefits. In Sri Lanka, there exists a separate pay-scale for university teachers, and a lecturer begins his career at the university with a monthly basic salary of Rupees 39,754 and highest Rupees 48,445. For a senior professor the monthly salary range is between Rs. 67,100 lowest and Rs. 87,775 highest. In addition, they get extra incentives every month in the form of lifestyle expenses, Rs. 7,800, and for all teachers there is allocation for 80 to 90 percent of the basic salary as academic incentives. In addition, they also receive research allowance, 35%, and special allowance, 20%, of the basic salary. Pakistan also maintains a separate pay-scale phenomenally high, where a university assistant teacher gets monthly lowest Rs. 1,04,000 and highest Rs. 2,11,250, and a professor’s monthly salary ranges from lowest Rs. 2,34,000 to highest Rs. 4,05,600. In India, there doesn’t exist a separate pay-scale for university teachers, but after joining the university each teacher gets a number of allowances in addition to their basic salary and other fringe benefits. India runs a highly research-oriented national educational programme, and, therefore, immediately after joining the university, a university teacher receives a onetime grant for research ranging from Rs. Two lakh lowest to Rs. Five lakh highest.
The above comparative statistics provides an opportunity to realise how importantly is the higher education recognised by our neighbouring countries, and this is all the more reason that we pay heed to the demand for a separate pay-scale by the university teachers.
The present scandalised status offered in the proposed 8th national pay-scale shouldn’t be seen as done by some whimsical sleight of hand, but rather the formation of such a negative attitude towards university teachers has been the result of a long-grown pathetic scenario in this sector. Historical data will support this view that since long university education has been politicised along the party-line politics, which is different from politicising higher education along the ideological line, say, for example, the spirit of the Liberation War. Ideally, politics is a matter of ideology, which should impact an institution beyond the physical individual identity of the people who carry that ideology. But in reality that higher ideal is compromised by a distorted vision that an ideology is identifiable with the physical entity of the individual, in this case in the persona of the individual teacher.
Thus the abstract and intangible dimension of the ideology is wrongly deemed as expressible in the tangible form of an individual teacher. Thus in pursuit of spreading an ideology, university authorities, being also influenced by external political pressure, have recruited not teachers but party-political agents, and that in a large way by recruiting inferior applicants sacrificing the brighter ones. In some cases, nepotism and shady dealings have also resulted in inferior recruitment. In short, merit has been sacrificed to biased allegiances.
Now the compromise with merit can be digestible in other job sectors, perhaps, but never ever in higher education, where an inferior person recruited as a university teacher may cause harm to the institution for nearly as many as four decades. Teaching is an intellectual profession, and so its impact is both invisible and far reaching, but, which, unfortunately, is not always sensed by a university authority keen on recruiting a party political agent with inferior academic records rather than a suitable candidate fit to teach at the university level.
This practice being followed for decades together has created a negative impression about the quality of the university teachers in the greater society, where in numerous social transactions everybody, whoever he may be, comes to be tested for his real worth. Thus in numerous public forums university teachers have been seen to be less qualified than their official tags demanded. University professors have become cheaper by the dozen. Most of them become professors without any significant research publication in their chosen fields. The negative image has created a negative impact on the body of the people who fix the pay-structure of the nation. So university teachers have fallen into a vicious cycle. Compromised recruiting system, coupled with poor pay structure, has failed to allure the more brilliant students to university teaching, and being poorer for that other competing agencies, say the bureaucracy, have grown a false notion that a university teacher’s job is tantamount to ordinary office time keeping from 9 to 5.
This is where the pain resides, the failure by the competent bodies to realise the significance and relevance of higher education in a growing society that Bangladesh is. The failure also includes an incorrect (rather perverted) view that a nation can grow without higher education. Otherwise, why would the university teachers, the carriers of higher education, be falling into such ignoble fold?
If a separate pay-scale for the university teachers is not feasible at the moment, I suggest that they are paid a number of increments with their basic pay at the time of joining in any rung. Maybe, a lecturer should be given five increments, followed by an assistant professor to be paid six increments, an associate professor seven, a professor eight, and a vice-chancellor nine increments. Correspondingly, with their basic pay fixation, other allowances would be given on a percentage basis. Let’s see. . . .
The writer is Vice-Chancellor, Jatiya Kabi Kazi Nazrul Islam University
Source:http://www.daily-sun.com/printversion/details/62405/On-university-teachersrsquo-demand-for-a-separate-payscale
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