Tirupati: Universities reel under faculty crunch in State

• By 2015, 52 per cent of vacancies remained unfilled and now the vacancies increased by another 10 per cent

• There is no recruitment of faculty for the last 10 years

• It affects research in varsities, say experts

Tirupati: The sheer negligence of successive governments in the State for more than a decade has left higher education at the crossroads. It is a known fact that faculty plays an important place in raising education standards. Experienced faculty adds value to any University and students looks at the faculty of the departments they wish to join before arriving at a final decision.

Unfortunately, the universities in Andhra Pradesh fail attain higher standards with the severe teaching faculty crunch for over a decade. Year after year the vacancies have been increasing.But there is no effort to fill vacancies in any department in any University. After bifurcation, TDP government has increased the retirement age to 62 years for university faculty. With this, two years there were no retirements.

By 2015, the percentage of vacancies in all 14 universities in the State reached 52. After that many faculty members attained superannuation.the departments hadbeen deprived of experienced faculty. During the last three years, more than 10 per cent more vacancies arose, taking the tally to about 2,000 posts out of the sanctioned strength of nearly 3,500 posts. Further, every month a few senior faculty members are retiring. The University Teachers Associations have been continuously demanding that the retirement age be increased to 65 years as per UGC norms.the previous government did not take any decision on the demand.

Normally, for every professor, there will be two associate professors and four assistant professors. With no fresh recruitment of assistant professors for over 10 years, their number has drastically come down in all universities as the existing faculty got promotions. The universities have been relying more on academic consultants (ACs) to complete class work. In many departments ACs have outnumbered regular faculty.

A senior professor has commented that things will go bad to worse with more faculty members retiring in the coming months. With no signs of recruitment in the near future, number of departments will be left with no regular faculty in many universities. Even if recruitment is initiated now, experienced faculty will not be available. This is a major problem which the government needs to address. As some universities are having no regular vice-chancellors and executive councils for more than six months, they are unabletotake at any policy decisions.

Meanwhile, the process of filling vacant posts remains pending for more than a year. In Andhra University itself nearly 600 vacancies remain unfilled followed by more than 300 posts in SV University. The situation in the third generation universities like Krishna, Faculty shortage in Rayalaseema and Vikrama Simhapuri is more severe with more than 60 percent vacancies remaining unfilled.

The problem of faculty shortage has its serious impact on research work. Both the quality and quantity of research work has been affected. And this may further become a burden for the universities as the UGC may cut the volume funds if they continue to fail to fulfil the ratio of student – teacher ratio leaving aside the standards.