Tirupati: Meagre faculty strength affects SVU ranking

Tirupati: The 68-year- old Sri Venkateswara University received a blow from the National Assessment and Accreditation Council (NAAC) as it lost its A+ grade during the latest assessment. Though the University could satisfy various parameters of the assessment criteria, the continuous apathy of successive governments in filling up of the vacant teaching posts and in providing enough block grants among other things have made an adverse impact on the University.

As such it had to forego the A+ grade which was attained in 2017.

In the past 15 years no government has focussed its attention on this key sector to provide the required infrastructure.

Lack of basic infrastructure facilities in several universities has adversely impacted the administration, teaching and research activities.

To add to the woes, the present government has made a huge cut in the allocation of block grants to different universities compared to the previous government making them suffer from financial woes to take up any developmental activities.

Further, since 2007, no permanent teaching faculty recruitment has been done in the State. The Universities were forced to rely on academic consultants who are appointed on contract basis and are not eligible to guide the research activities.

Every University in the state has a large number of vacant teaching posts and with 54 departments and 88 courses SV University should have at least 572 permanent faculty. But it is having only 160 permanent faculty and running the academic work with the contract staff only.

According to Prof YV Rami Reddy of SVU Chemistry department the University has only 50 percent of the total faculty strength and this hampers the prospects of getting good ranks.

The research work was plagued by this meagre faculty which was pointed out by the NAAC peer team that visited the SVU in its assessment report. Due to a cut in block grant, the varsity could not extend financial support to the faculty to pursue advanced research.

Speaking to The Hans India, SVU Vice-Chancellor Prof K Raja Reddy said that they got good scoring in qualitative assessment comprising 30 percent of total assessment but could not get the anticipated score in quantitative metrics.

"The NAAC team assesses the performance under seven-point criteria on which they award low scores. The faculty crunch was one among them, but it is a nationwide problem. We have appealed against the assessment and are hopeful of getting A+ grade for sure", the VC maintained.