The Print recently printed an article on ‘Contractualisation of academic jobs and its severe impacts’. They stated “In recent years, one can see a rising trend towards casualisation. Contractualisation of these assured/permanent jobs, especially in higher educational institutions”. This automatically brings our attention towards the recent incident related to an LSR ad-hoc professor being sack. On July 20, 2024, Professor Pushplata Kumar, who had been teaching in the Journalism Department at Lady Shri Ram College (LSR) as an ad-hoc professor, was reportedly sack. CONTRACTUALISATION OF ACADEMIC JOBS
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This brings us to one conclusion: both teaching and non teaching jobs are now increasingly being advertise as contractual positions. Where a person is appoint for a few months with a fixed salary as per a contract. However, due to the scarcity of jobs, especially in the social sciences and humanities industry, these contractual jobs become aspirational. Particularly in the teaching field. Although job loss has a very visible impact, there are many negative effects of casualisation which are part of the job structure.
Firstly, there is restrict academic freedom and participation in curriculum designing as well as decision-making. Secondly, the burden of administrative work is also often put on the contractual workers.
It is expect that the trend of contractualisation will only increase further with the implementation of the National Education Policy 2020. CONTRACTUALISATION OF ACADEMIC JOBS
The ones who are privileged have a choice to study and work abroad but contractualisation of academic labor is not limited only to India. We are currently dealing with a crisis that happens to be a byproduct of neo-liberal policies worldwide. Hence, there is an urgent need to think and rethink about the road ahead for contractualisation and its severe consequences for higher education. CONTRACTUALISATION OF ACADEMIC JOBS
