In Govt. run colleges, the turnover of teachers', i.e., the movement of teachers' from one to other take place, for the reason non other than the transfer policy of the government; but in most private colleges, turnover of employees, especially the teachers' turnover is due to several reasons; most cases are due to financial and service security reasons. A zero rate of turnover is impossible to find since in any organization some compulsory separation will always occur due to unavoidable
reasons. Whatever may be the cause of teachers' turnover, the high turnover of faculty/teachers' has a great impact in the quality of our higher education. The management should try to find out the reasons for high rate of turnover and take appropriate steps to remove the causes of staff turnover or at least try to mitigate it.
Seeking for Govt. jobs followed by better job opportunities and salaries are found to be major reasons for teachers' leaving their jobs in the college they are teaching in.
Labour turnover represents serious financial loss to the educational institutions. When separation occurs, replacements have to be selected, recruited and trained to fill up the vacancies.
The cost of labour turnover is made up of some or all the following components:
1. Loss of time while a replacement is being found.
2. Quality of teaching is affected.
3. The students understanding capacity is affected.
4. Cost of selection, recruitment and training of the replacement.
5. Administrative and other incidental cost of removing the leaver and adding the replacement to the payroll.
Some of the suggestions to improve the situation can be:
1. As per the 6th Pay Commission, the Govt. teachers' are getting higher salary Compared to the teachers' of the private colleges for the same work load. So the govt. Can regularise the pay structure of the private managed colleges of the state.
2. The govt. can grant fund for the library development, office up gradation, amenities for sports, recreation and other co. curricular activities.
3. University can help the constituent colleges getting financial assistance from the UGC, by examining their academic performance as first priority, not restricting to all lot of other formalities.
4. As the UGC is providing leave and other benefits for the Govt. college teachers", for doing Ph.D. under the Faculty Improvement Programme (FIP), same thing can also be given to private college teachers' for pursuing research activities.
5. Some of the colleges can be considered as deficit -aided colleges for financial security Or by grating deficit aid for certain period as the UGC does to states while Implementation of UGC scales to Govt colleges.
Private colleges constitute 80% of the total colleges in Nagaland. All together, there are 53 colleges under the Higher Education Department. 33 are secular colleges and the rest are non-secular colleges, l1 (eleven) are full fledged govt. colleges and the rest are under private managements, either proprietorial, society run, church! Community run or by such other organisations. In enrolment too, the private colleges feed more than 80% of the total students admissions produced by schools in the state, each year. In results also, private colleges produce much better results than the govt. colleges.
In spite of the above mentioned facts, private college teachers' and staff do not get fair place of justice and adequate support from the state and national agencies and commissions, ruling the Indian education system. Since the salaries of private college teachers' are governed by different private managements, its structure varies from one to the other. Turnover of private teachers' from one college to the other are more common because of this un-uniform salary structure practice of the~ private managements. Again, the govt. teachers' are paid 3 to 4 times higher salary than the private college teachers' for the same or even lesser amount of workload.
Unless this higher rate of turnover of private teachers' are checked by taking appropriate supportive measure or regulated by a common weighing tool so as to bringing it at par with the govt. college teachers', the quality of higher education in Nagaland would remain jeopardised for years to come.
M. Chetia, Vice- Principal,
Unity College, Dimapur
