Government plans state-level test for assistant professors appointment

PATNA: The state education department is planning to introduce a state-level eligibility test for appointing assistant professors. This test will be patterned on the National Eligibility Test (NET) or the Bihar Eligibility Test (BET), which was last conducted in 2002.
Bihar State Higher Education Council (BSHEC) vice-chairman Kameshwar Jha met education minister Sunil Kumar on Tuesday to discuss the state-level eligibility test and other higher education issues.They decided to convene a council meeting in the third week of July to finalize the test’s procedural details.

Jha said the responsibility for conducting the state-level eligibility test for assistant professorship would likely be assigned to either the Bihar State University Service Commission or the Bihar School Examination Board. Before that, a committee of experts will be appointed to determine the test format and syllabi details.
The BET provision follows the UGC’s decision to make a PhD optional for assistant professor appointments. With the National Eligibility Test (NET) mandatory for applicants, BET will help talented youths in Bihar qualify for assistant professorships. Jha added that BET would apply to candidates responding to the next advertisement from the Bihar State University Service Commission. The commission is currently interviewing candidates for 4,638 assistant professor posts advertised in September 2020.
Last year, the UGC announced that the University Grants Commission (Minimum Qualifications for Appointment of Teachers and Other Academic Staff in Universities and Colleges and Other Measures for the Maintenance of Standards in Higher Education) Regulations, 2018, had been amended. The PhD qualification is now optional for a teacher’s post, with NET, State Eligibility Test (SET), and State Level Eligibility Test (SLET) being the minimum criteria for direct recruitment to assistant professor positions in higher education institutions.
Additionally, BSHEC plans to conduct a state-level combined PhD admission test across various subjects for all state universities. This test will rotate annually among the universities, with Patna University likely to conduct the inaugural test. Results will consider university-wise and subject-wise seat availability and reservation rosters.