The representation of OBC in faculty recruitment in HEIs | Data

The share of professors, associate professors, and assistant professors from OBCs will be around 27% when one cycle of jobs for all levels will be complete

On August 1, 2023, a reply to a starred question in Parliament on the shortfall in the recruitment of professors belonging to Other Backward Classes (OBC) in higher educational institutes (HEIs) gained significant attention. The reply, which was based on annual data published by the University Grants Commission (UGC), stated that only 4% of the professors recruited were from the OBC category.

It is important to note that these numbers are subject to interpretation. A clumsy interpretation would be to understand this as a far lower number when compared with the constitutionally mandated 27% reservation for OBCs in government jobs and HEIs. This is the common interpretation, which shows HEIs in poor light.

Table 1 | The table shows the total sanctioned posts for teaching staff at various levels (professor, associate professor and assistant professor). The table also lists the category-wise teaching positions filled. The share of OBCs of the total posts filled is highlighted in %.

Assist. Prof: Assistant professor; Assoc. Prof: Associate professor; Total posts: Total posts filled by teaching staff

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The numbers could also be interpreted in a different way. There were only nine professors (0.85%) and 38 associate professors (1.41%) in the OBC category as on March 31, 2020, which rose to 60 professors (4.5%) and 187 associate professors (6.5%) as on March 31, 2023 (Table 1). This leads to an increase of about seven times and five times in professors and associate professors from the OBC category, respectively, within three years. This interpretation paints a rosy picture of HEIs.

Which of these interpretations is correct? Perhaps both are correct, yet both suffer from statistical slackness. This issue is important, Hence, it merits further understanding of the details of promotion/selection to the post of professor and associate professor in HEIs.