Engineering Colleges in AP are short of 60,000 lecturers!

Engineering Colleges in AP are short of 60,000 lecturers!

M.Tech students and B.Tech graduates are being recruited to teach in colleges.

The educational stan dards in 700-odd in the engineering colleges state are at stake as 60,000 lecturer, assistant professor and professor posts are lying vacant. If adhere these colleges were to to the stipulated norms of recruiting M. Tech post-graduates as lecturers, it would take at least 10 years to fill up the vacan cies. The State produces about 6,000 M. Tech post graduates a year.

Given the rate at which engineering colleges have been mushrooming in the state, the vacant lecturer posts will remain unfilled forever. The shortage is so severe that almost all the engineering colleges have been recruiting B.Tech graduates or M.Tech stu dents (on part time basis) to manage the classroom. The result is awfully low educa tional standards of engineer ing graduates. Some of the managements have recruited final year B.Tech students to teach first and second year students.

Throwing educational standards to the winds, the AICTE has “temporarily” permitted colleges to hire B.Tech graduates as lecturers. The “temporary permission” given three years ago, has now been extended to another three years. For a is a must for the post of professors. The number of postgraduate engineering seats in the state is highly disproportionate to the num ber of B.Tech seats. The State has a little over 6,000 M.Tech seats as against 2.8 lakh B.Tech seats.

The low salary offered by engineering colleges is a major deterrent for M.Tech post graduates in taking up the profession of teaching.

Though colleges prefer to keep mum on the issue as lecturer to become an assistant professor, he or she needs to be an M.Tech postgraduate with at least five years of teaching experience. A degree of doctorate in philosophy many engineering aspirants are giving Eamcet a miss nowadays, some of the managements speak out over the rampant trend in the city.

Dr Rathaiah, president of Vignan Group of Institutions says, “Earlier, there was a rule that all engineering college teachers must be M.Tech graduates, but as there was shortage of teachers, the rule was relaxed. Also, most M.Tech teachers aren’t qualified enough as the M.Tech col leges here aren’t great here.”

Some colleges have insuf ficient faculty yet continue to take fees from the stu dents. Some B.Tech gradu ates donned the role of teachers because they didn’t bag the jobs they desired.

Muqtar Pasha, a teacher at VIF engineering college, says, “I had attended a few interviews with MNCs but couldn’t get through so I took up the job at col lege.”

D. Kalyan from MLR Institute of Technology, who jumped on the bandwagon too, says, “Apart from me, many of my friends are teaching now.”

College staff also inform that it is difficult to recruit teachers as most students are lured by the heavy pay packages of software companies. “With the number of colleges increasing every year, it is only natural that there will be a shortage of lecturers. Many students don’t opt to teach after graduation as they get recruited by MNCs,” says Chengal Raju, principal, Vasavi Engineering College.

Source: DC