AP expects bounty from UGC

A conference with all the vice-chancellors of all the State universities will be held on November 30 in Hyderabad to discuss on the recently-announced Rashtriya Uchchtar Siksha Abhiyan (RUSA), an ambitious scheme of the Union Government to promote Higher Education in the country. The meet would focus on the institutions that need to be promoted, the areas that need a lift, the urgency to give a fillip to research activity in the varsities etc.

This is the first conference on the RUSA at State level which a follow up of a two meetings held in New Delhi in which officials of Ministry of Higher Education have participated.

According to top officials of the Higher Education Council, the state expects huge flow of funds for the cash-strapped State universities, autonomous colleges and professional institutions. The Council has sought reports from the vice-chancellors on various issues such as faculty requirement, financial support for research projects, how various academic departments in varsities affected due to paucity of funds, the running expenditure details and the sources of internal generation etc. The VCs are expected to make presentations during the meet, it is said.

So far, the state government has been allocating a paltry Rs five crore to each university every year which does not meet any requirement. Several research projects in universities have been moving on a snail’s pace due to resource crunch.

The Council is expected to submit its proposals in the third week of December to UGC. Officials have been making plans to submit proposals on each varsity and also the colleges which were chosen to be promoted. “Our proposals are not just meant for immediate assistance, we make concrete proposals with an eye on futuristic needs. Strengthening the older universities, giving impetus to new ones is necessary” an official told The Hans India.

“One of the grey areas is lack of sufficient faculty in varsities. According to our estimates, 40 per cent of vacancies remained unfilled for the past several years in AP varsities. Yes, I agree that there is dearth of skilled manpower but this is problem prevalent across India. It would be futile to pump in huge money for varsities when there is insufficient faculty” he added.

The meet is also expected to look into increase the Gross Enrolment Ratio (GER) in State universities. So far, the GER is much above the national average of 19 per cent, it needs to be improved further, the official said.

The meet will lay emphasis on concentrating more on academic and teaching aspects rather than administrative issues. Reports that have come in from various sources suggest that the university professors could not guide the scholars properly due to their pre-occupation with some other administrative work. How best to contain this will be discussed, the official said.

More than 70 institutions, including prominent colleges like Nizam (Hyderabad), Maharaja (Vizianagaram), DNR (Bhimavaram), CRR (ELuru), AC College (Guntur), Silver Jubilee (Kurnool) along with a host of others have been expecting financial help from UGC under RUSA and the APSCHE will have to submit proposals for the same.