Anantapur: Taking advantage of NEP, CUAP to step up to touch glorious heights

Anantapur: The Central University of AP established in 2019 as part of the 2014 AP Reorganisation Act package in Anantapur district, has successfully completed two academic years and entered into third academic year braving two turbulent years of teething problems in the first year of its establishment in 2019-20 and the biggest Covid challenge in 2020-21.

Ever since S A Kori was appointed the destiny Vice-chancellor of the prestigious Central University, he steered clear of all the challenges he faced to keep the rudderless boat on track and still help it to perform well from 2020-21 year onwards. He faced the Covid onslaught braving all odds and held online classes and at a later stage, offline classes strictly adhering to Covid standard operating procedures.

In all the 11 courses offered by the university 4 were under-graduate and 7 PG courses. To the delight of university management all the 120 students, who passed out of the university performed very well in on and off campus interviews and secured jobs in mostly overseas companies. The excellent performance had an electrifying effect on new students from north, north-east and southern states that the demand for admissions into the university shot-up in the 2021-22 academic year.

Despite the infant university grappling with infrastructure and academic and teaching faculty shortage including inadequate hostel accommodation etc, as many as 2,864 applications were received for 394 seats pertaining to 16 courses including 5 new courses added for 2021-22 academic year.

Bachelor of vocational courses include Retail management, Travel & Tourism etc and PG courses include MA with English, Telugu, Politics, Science, Economics and M.Sc Mathematics, Applied Economics and M Tech in Artificial Intelligence and Data Science etc.

CU VC S A Kori in an interaction with The Hans India at his chambers expressed confidence of taking the Central University in AP to glorious and national heights by taking advantage of the New Education Policy which gives the administration greater flexibility in choosing need based life training and skills development to boost capability and employability of students coming from rural and backward districts of the country. The students coming from more than 11 states are cooperative understanding the travails of newborn university. The New Education Policy entails any student of this university to discontinue studies to go abroad for any diploma course and return even after 2-4 years and continue studies. So, the question of loss of academic year for any student does not arise. This flexibility is part of the new execution police, Kori explained.

On the steps taken in following Covid protocols, the VC said all students who studied and are studying have been given the two doses of Covid vaccination.

The Central University is a picture of miniature India representing the states of AP, Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Telangana, UP, Bihar and other North and North Eastern states. The huge demand for admissions here is reflective of the name it carved out for itself in a span of single academic year.

On the infrastructure development front for the university, Kori revealed that the phase 1 of the buildings project spread over more than 100 acres of land in Dontaluru village in Rekulajunta mandal will take a minimum of 5 years. Meanwhile the university is housed in JNTU university properties in the city. The vice-chancellor expressed his gratitude to the JNTU management and the state government for its fullest cooperation.