Public good or commodity: contractual faculty as cost-cutting measure

Contractualisation or casualisation of academic labour has been a dominant feature of Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) in India in recent times. The neoliberal push towards universities managing their own funds has been a significant factor in making academic labour precarious.

Education has been transformed from a public good into a commodity, as is evident from the funding cuts in education budgets. Educational institutions are expected to operate as corporations focused on skill development, event management, and producing market-ready workforces rather than as sites of critical thinking.

Faculty well-being and security have taken a back seat. With continuous funding cuts, universities have become focused on their financial health. Hiring contractual labour is seen as an easy and cheap solution, as it creates a workforce that can be used while also reducing the financial costs to the university.

The National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 also encourages contractual recruitment. It gives institutions the flexibility to recruit adjunct and visiting faculty on temporary or fixed-term contracts. However, this often leads to structural discrimination in the workplace and a lack of academic freedom in the classroom.

Stiff competition for academic positions makes early-career academics particularly vulnerable. Informal workers constitute over 90% of the country’s workforce. According to the All India Survey on Higher Education (AISHE) 2022-23 data, nearly a fifth of faculty in public institutions are contractual.

Informality is experienced differently depending on marginalised identities such as caste, class, religion, ethnicity, region, and gender. India’s policy of affirmative action has expanded access to higher educational institutions for historically marginalised communities like Dalits, Adivasis, tribals, and women.

A move towards contractualisation threatens the pursuit of social justice, as reservations may not be implemented for these posts. Contractual faculty are denied several benefits. They are not paid well in most educational institutions and lack social security benefits.

There is also a delay in releasing their salaries in comparison to permanent faculty. They do not get yearly increments, their leaves are fewer than those of permanent faculty, and some do not get summer or winter breaks or maternity leave.

By virtue of being contractual faculty, they are often obliged to work ‘under’ permanent faculty. The option to say no barely exists. Contractualisation thus creates and perpetuates a hierarchy among faculty. It becomes a form of institutional exploitation and thrives in an environment in which social relations are based on the permanency of employment status.

Contractualisation also impacts how teaching and learning happen in the classrooms. Contractual faculty have little freedom to choose the curriculum, the courses, and the pedagogical tools. Their roles are defined and they have to adhere to them.

There is a need for more discussions on the politics of labour, care, and ethics within HEIs. It is not just universities; professional associations can also take responsibility for spearheading these discussions. The impact of precarious employment is detrimental, as it leads to the creation and reinforcement of hierarchies in the workplace and the decline of academic freedom.

(Rituparna Patgiri is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at IIT-Guwahati)