Reject FYUP! Resist the All Out Neo-Liberal Assault on Higher Education Teachers!

Resist Job Cuts, Permanent Contractualization and Strangling of Dissent !! Protect the Rights and Jobs of the Vulnerable Ad Hoc Teachers ! Immediately Fill the Vacant Permanent Positions !!

FYUP: In Whose Interest Afterall ?

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Public Hearing
With Students, Parents, Teachers, Educationists 30 May 2013, Arts Faculty, North Campus, DU, 11 am Our Future! Our University! Equality! Social Inclusivity! Quality! Affordability!
Delhi University and its 80 affiliated colleges presently employ around 4000 early career academics across disciplines who have made significant contributions even as Ad hoc teachers in sustaining the acclaimed academic lifeline of DU. But, the recent imposition of The 4 year Under-graduate Programme (FYUP) has seriously threatened the existing teaching posts as well as the job prospects of future generations of early career academics. Contractual teaching has already become a norm in Delhi University with permanent appointments being withheld since last several years. With thousands of permanent posts and allotted positions after OBC expansion lying vacant, DU has practically become an ad hoc university. Majority of the teacher s today are on contract facing systematic denial of job security and basic service rights like: winter and summer vacation salary, earned leaves, maternity leaves, increments associated with PhD and M.Phil degree holders. This already bleak contractual setup of DU has been further vitiated by the fresh spate of FYUP reforms which portends sinister neoliberal design of CUTS in permanent jobs and institutionalising PERMANENT CONTRACTUALIZATION of teaching posts. How FYUP will Destroy Permanent Posts The neo-liberal agenda of higher education - already reflected in the Birla Ambani report and the National Knowledge Commission Recommendations etc. - rests on replacing specialized critical knowledge base by low skill vocationalized education. The FYUP directly translates these precepts into practice. Recall how the Birla Ambani Report (BAR) had clearly directed the political establishment to reduce and contractualize teaching posts because permanent teachers protected by labour laws pose the greatest threat to private investment and market reforms in the education sector. (See BAR: A vision for Education in India). The DU VCs invectives against the teachers for asking legitimate questions against FYUP and his emphasis on not filling vacant posts is the clear indication that FYUP entails serious threat to the interests and job prospects of the teachers. Since every anti-teacher and anti-academic move is peddled through fancy jargons it is important to unravel the real machinations that lie beneath the shady claims of FYUP. 1. The existing specialized Honours and the General graduate programme cater to the different academic interests and career aspirations of the students who join the University after already going through a certain degree of specialisation at plus-two level. The FYUPs single fit for all model ends these multiple academic and career options on one hand and on the other, sabotages the scope of specialization by throwing students out through multiple exit points. Built into this process is the surreptitious design to cut down teaching jobs by eradicating the entire curriculum of the separate General Graduate Programme. With the extinction of the entire General Graduate Programme and the whole set of papers meant for the Science, Arts and Commerce streams the FYUP will drastically reduce teaching posts. 2. The Multiple Exit options, which is in effect drop out degrees after 2 years (diploma) and 3 years (Bachelor), will throw majority of students from under privileged sections out of the system. This will drastically reduce the number of students who will enter 3rd and 4th year. Many so called non-elite off campus colleges and womens colleges, which painstakingly cater to the educational and career aspirations of students from deprived sections will get converted into 2 year Diploma giving communit y colleges where most of the students will be thrown out by DU with drop out degrees after 2 nd and 3rd year. Deflation and devaluation of these colleges which constitute the majority of the DU colleges and employ the highest number of teachers will eliminate a huge number of teaching posts.

As it is, at present important Social science and language disciplines like Philosophy, Education, Geography, Urdu, Arabic, Punjabi etc are taught in very few colleges and are often opted by students from under privileged backgrounds. Any genuine effort of academic reform should have recognized the critical importance of these subjects in nation building. However, FYUPs crude emphasis on market driven academics and multiple exit points will further push these underprivileged students out of the system, empty the classrooms in the third and fourth years and thus decimate these disciplines, eliminate teaching posts in colleges and discourage future academic career ventures in these subjects. 3. Reduction of Emphasis in Honours or Main Discipline: In the FYUP the Honours or the main Discipline subjects constitute just 45% (20 out almost 50 papers) of the total number of course. Most of the Honours Papers are in 3 rd and 4th year which means only a few students will study the majority of the Honours Papers thus eventually reducing the number of teachers required for teaching the main Discipline courses. 4. Abolishing Tutorial component in all courses except the DC1 courses will also reduce job posts because in the previous model the tutorial component was part of all the courses and contributed largely to the total workload and required teaching hands in the departments. Foundation Courses: Several forces within the DU administration are spreading rumours about the foundation courses being the magic wand that will resist JOB CUTS which is in fact far from the actual truth. Rather the Foundation Courses are the perfect example of the twin barrels of neoliberal education r eforms that will not only dilute university education and encourage inequality among students but also systematically cut down teaching jobs. The VCs directive that only existing permanent teachers will teach the Foundation Courses is the evidence of this agenda of 11 compulsory Foundation courses.

How FC reduces teaching jobs:

1. In the three year model there were different paper options for different groups of students within a single course. As for instance, in Modern Indian Language the students according to their compatibility could choose from 3 options like MIL (Language)-A, B,C. Similarly in Compulsory English Paper there were 3 options: English A, B,C (Advanced, Intermediate, Basic English) The content of the internal options which catered to different student groups according to their abilities created posts for teaching each option which the FYUP has completely done away with.

2. Since the entire batch of the college will study the same Foundation Courses, therefore, the number of teachers required will be lower because several classes can now be merged into one cluster class taught by a single teacher. The university is surreptitiously facilitating such practices by passing directives that has raised the optimum section strength from 40 to 60 students and by cleverly promoting merging of different disciplines under the guise of inter-disciplinarity. 3. Moreover, each department has only 1 foundation course which is offered for just 1 semester. This will create huge fluctuation in workload over the two semesters. A department which offers the FC in the first semester will have very little workload in the next which is in effect an open invitation to permanent contractualization. If the colleges try to address it by making two groups of departments that will do different sets of foundation courses in each semester then the required number of teachers will be slashed to half of the entire number that is required presently.

That the reduction of permanent faculty positions and initiating permanent contractualization in DU is the primary aim of FYUP is clear from the doublespeak of the DU VC. In his open letter to the teachers dated 26, April 2013 the VC claimed that the FYUP will increase the number of faculty posts citing the examples of Bhagat Singh and Dayal Singh College. But when the staff council of Dayal Singh College countered his claims in the media, he made a complete volte face and came up with the bizarre alibi in his TOI interview on 6th May that Theres no requirement (of extra hands) for the first year. And of the 4,000 sanctioned, we will recruit for only those posts that are actually required in colleges with the number allotted after OBC expansion as the outer limit. I dont want to just fill up positions . What can be a more blatant admission of the hidden agenda of FYUP to destroy teaching posts in DU? FYUP will adversely impact research in the country. DU is the biggest employer of early career researchers who have committed themselves to teaching and research renouncing the temptations of other professions with lucrative pay packages. If DU closes its doors to these research scholars then with no secured jobs in the horizon, talented and interested students will get disinterested in opting teaching and research as a career option any more. Let there be no mistake: FYUP is in fact the template of operationalizing neo-liberalisms secret agenda of transforming public funded higher education of India into a large business sector up for grabs for the corporates waiting in the wings. By all counts it is obvious now that the real gameplan is to dismantle quality and affordable university education and turn DU into a teaching shop for churning out semi-skilled students as flexible low-paid labour pool for footloose corporates. FYUP also exposes the stark reality behind UPAs tall claims about Indias Knowledge Economy and false promises about making India an education superpower by greatly bolstering research and knowledge production by attracting young talent into research. And after all such tall claims, DU- a central university in the heart of the national capital- implements the most blatant anti-teacher, anti-student and anti-research reform of FYUP with direct support from the HRD ministry of the UPA government. One wonders how students will be attracted to research if the gates of universities which provide employment to researchers are closed for ever. How will quality of research improve in vis-a-vis international standards when the personnel conducting research are under severe job insecurity and facing rampant exploitation? Such unanswered questions are yet another expos of the unbridgeable distance that exists between the promises and the real designs being implemented in practice by the UPA government in the higher education sector.

FYUP is just paving the way for many more anti-teacher, anti-student and anti-academic reforms that are being promoted by the neoliberal think tank of UPA government. The DU administration has already clarified that preparations are in place for humiliating reforms like Biometric system, 9-5 unconditional presence in the place of work and mandatory college work during the vacations. In directive after directive the VC has threatened teachers with penalties, salary cuts at the hint of the minutest resistance. The reported move to penalize teachers who pass resolutions from the democratic platform of the staff association against the decisions of the University administration presages grim warnings for the future. The express intention of these reforms is to reduce the teachers by threats, humiliation and disenchantment to the level of uncritical consenting employee s who will be mute executors of all anti-people policies of the government. Such humiliating, quantifying and claustrophobic reforms are against the very essence of teaching and research as a profession. We call upon the entire teaching community, researchers, early career academics and all democracy loving people who value egalitarian education to rise in steadfast rejection of the FYUP and its sinister designs of cutting down jobs, contractualization of teachers, mechanical quantification of job hours, authoritarian humiliation and the denial of the hard earned rights of the teachers and the larger democratic essence of the academic profession.

LDTF
(Left Democratic Teachers Forum) Contact: 9868034224, 9868337493

AISA
(All India Students' Association) Contact:9213974505, 9013219020