Academic Precarity and the Contractual University
Rituparna Patgiri | 01 October 2026 | The India Forum
In 2023, I was fired from my job at a college in the University of Delhi, where I had worked as an ad hoc lecturer for three years. Ad hoc lectureships last for the semester, and incumbents like me had to go through another round of open-call interviews to do the same job the following semester (Patgiri 2026). We were allowed just four leaves in a semester, unlike regular faculty who had earned leave, maternity leave, childcare leave, and medical leave, amongst other benefits. In many cases, we were required to teach for more than the 16 hours mandated by the UGC for assistant professors in undergraduate colleges, in addition to administrative work, extra invigilation duties, and any residual work that came up.
There was hardly an option of saying no. And after all this, as several of my colleagues and I discovered, we were entirely disposable, let go at will.
According to the All India Survey on Higher Education (AISHE) 2022-23 data, nearly a fifth of faculty in public institutions are contractual. This domination of contractualised academic labour in higher education institutions (HEIs) in India mirrors educational spaces worldwide under populist governments and neoliberal economies. ‘Financial autonomy’ for institutions masks the demand that they raise funds on their own and cut costs—the first of which is budgets earmarked towards academic salaries.
Contractual employment allows colleges and universities to hire casual employees without paying them full salaries and benefits. The neoliberal university saves money and also exercises more power over the precarious workforce. No wonder then that tenured or permanent positions are few, and the options that are most likely available are contractual teaching positions with meagre pay. At the University of Delhi, for instance, the number of applicants per contractual position has ranged between 80 and 200. In most cases, these are sound academics with PhD degrees, teaching experience, and publications.