Profile of scientific staff in agricultural universities in India

Abstract

Abstract A brief profile of scientific staff in the State Agricultural Universities (SAUs) in India is described. The data collected through a survey sketches the scientific staff background, age, gender, education, mobility, career details and time spent on various activities. Interesting differences were found in the activities of scientific staff of different grades. The findings show certain positive and negative features. The positive features are: scientific staff spend time on all four activities of SAUs, namely, research, teaching, extension and administration; increase in the number of scientific staff from urban background; increase in female scientific staff, and satisfactory career growth. Negative features are: lack of training opportunities; senior scientific staff in management grade spend more time in administration at the cost of teaching and research, and scientific staff selection becoming more localised. Amongst the scientific staff, readers are relatively more associated with academic...