Chennai: Candidates aspiring to become assistant professors have urged the state govt and the Teachers Recruitment Board (TRB) to ensure transparency in recruitment and conduct examinations at regular intervals to prevent delays and litigation.Their demands come amid complaints over the evaluation of descriptive-answer papers. The higher education department also is planning to reform recruitment exam to speed up the process of appointing faculty members to govt arts and science colleges.Candidates have sought the release of answer scripts of high- and low-scoring candidates to ensure the marking process was fair and transparent.“The current recruitment is being conducted after a gap of 10 years. Recruiting assistant professors once a year or once in two years would reduce anxiety among job aspirants. The selection process, including the examination pattern, should not be changed frequently,” said S Swaminathan, adviser, NET SLET Association.The TRB had said candidates who had applied for the State Eligibility Test (SET) could also apply for the recruitment examination. It also introduced descriptive-type questions in the written test.“In other recruitment notifications, candidates are generally required to have obtained the qualification before the date of notification. Relaxing this condition has raised doubts. Similarly, retaining only objective-type questions could have reduced litigation,” Swaminathan said.The TRB conducted the examination on Dec 27, last year, to fill 2,708 vacancies in government arts and science colleges. As many as 42,064 candidates appeared. Although the board released subject-wise results on June 25, it is yet to shortlist candidates for interviews due to pending cases.
