Karnataka to shift non-UGC guestlecturers to coordinator roles

Bengaluru: The govt has decided to appoint guest lecturers without University Grants Commission (UGC)-prescribed qualifications as academic coordinators in colleges.The Karnataka high court in 2024 directed the consideration of the educational qualifications prescribed by UGC in the selection process of guest lecturers. In Oct 2025, the HC dismissed a review filed by the state govt. Thus, all guest lecturers need to have NET/SLET/PhD to teach in colleges.Karnataka has 10,335 guest lecturers. Of them, 5,267 have UGC-prescribed qualifications, while 5,068 did not make the cut. Meanwhile, 1,215 teachers may be appointed as there were no eligible candidates available in those subjects.So the other guest faculty — around 3,853 with more than five years' experience — will be appointed as academic coordinators from 2026-27."We have taken the decision on humanitarian grounds as they have worked with our colleges for several years. As the court also clearly said the guest faculty should be appointed based on UGC-prescribed qualifications, we had to drop them during the counselling to hire guest faculty this year," higher education minister MC Sudhakar said Thursday.The academic coordinators will take care of administrative tasks, become assistants in labs and libraries, handle examination tasks, career guidance and psychological counselling, among others. This will be a temporary arrangement for three years with a fixed remuneration based on the experience of the candidates. It will cost the state exchequer Rs 95 crore annually.——-BOX:Religious symbols: Govt mulling CET retest for 5 studentsThe govt is considering giving the option of a retest to five students who were asked to remove their religious symbols during the Karnataka Common Entrance Test (KCET) recently.A girl student who was asked to remove her hijab did not write the physics paper, while four boys, who were forced to remove their sacred thread, said they could not concentrate on the test because of the incident. "Awarding grace marks is ruled out as it will create legal issues. But, if the students wish to take a retest, we will discuss it," the higher education minister said.——BOX: Set up engineering education reform authority: PanelAn expert committee on reforms in technical education, headed by the founder-director of the International Institute of Information Technology, Bangalore (IIIT-B), S Sadagopan, has recommended establishing a Karnataka engineering education reform authority (Keera).Minister Sudhakar said, "We will bring in structural reforms in engineering education based on the recommendations of the committee. For the establishment of Keera, we need to bring an act, which we will discuss and decide soon."If set up, Keera will coordinate curriculum reforms across Visvesvaraya Technological University, autonomous colleges and deemed-to-be universities and to manage hub-and-spoke infrastructure, broker industry partnerships. The recommendations will be rolled out after a govt order is issued.
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