Editor,
Recent reports and discussions within the academic community have raised serious concerns over the integrity of recruitment practices at the Arunachal Pradesh University (APU).
As reported by The Arunachal Times on 10 October, these concerns go beyond one instance – they speak to the very foundation of how public universities uphold fairness, expertise, and accountability.
The University Grants Commissions’ (UGC) 2018 regulations clearly define how interview boards for teaching appointments must be constituted. External experts are to be chosen by the university planning board, based solely on their subject-specific expertise. This provision is not procedural formality – it is the safeguard that ensures that candidates are evaluated by those who truly understand the discipline.
When this principle is ignored, or experts are drawn from unrelated fields, it strikes at the heart of the academic process. The responsibility for such lapses ultimately rests with the planning board and the executive council, whose duty is to preserve the credibility and integrity of the institution they serve.
Recent reports indicate that interview panels have included individuals whose academic backgrounds bear little relation to the disciplines under consideration. Such choices raise troubling questions about adherence to UGC norms and about the seriousness with which APU treats its own academic mission.
A university’s interview board should not resemble a random assortment of professionals; it must represent disciplinary depth, intellectual competence, and fairness. When these elements are compromised, the entire process – no matter how well intentioned – becomes suspect.
This issue also points to a growing and worrying trend: the creeping influence of market logic within higher education. The inclusion of evaluators from banking and finance in fields such as tribal studies reflect an attempt to measure knowledge through ‘industry relevance’. But universities are not corporations. They exist to advance knowledge, nurture critical thought, and preserve cultural and intellectual heritage – values that cannot be reduced to market terms or profit-driven metrics.
If every discipline must justify its existence through commercial value, there would be no place for humanities, no reason to study classical texts like Sanskrit literature, or any oral literature for that matter, and no support for the research that sustains our understanding of society and history.
It is time for the APU’s planning board and executive council to reflect seriously on these developments. Their decisions today will determine whether the APU grows into an institution known for academic excellence and ethical governance, or becomes another casualty of bureaucratic convenience.
The appeal is simple yet urgent: adhere to the UGC 2018 regulations and uphold the standards that define public universities as spaces of learning, not as recruitment offices.
Integrity in academic appointments is not a matter of administrative protocol; it is the moral backbone of the university system. The planning board and executive council have both the authority and the obligation to correct course. Doing so would send a powerful message – that APU values merit, fairness, and intellectual integrity above all else. Public trust in our universities depends on these principles. Let the Arunachal Pradesh University lead by example.
Aggrieved candidate