Telangana Govt colleges face acute shortage of faculty

Mahbubnagar: The government educational institutes particularly the colleges at junior, degree and post graduate levels in erstwhile Mahbubnagar district are facing acute shortage of teaching faculty. As a result students are suffering as there is no one to teach them crucial subjects.

According to statists available, there are total of 850 faculty posts in various government junior, degree and Post graduate colleges in erstwhile Mahabubnagar, out of which 86 are permanent faculties and 460 contract-based faculty delivering their services in 74 junior, 17 degree and 4 major post graduate colleges under Palamuru university under erstwhile Mahbubnagar district.

However, these figures show that all these colleges are still showing a short fall of 304 various teaching posts which are still vacant. In fact, as there have been no recruitments taking place either on contract or regular bases to fill these vacancies since past 4 years by the present government.

All those who are working in the present posts have been appointed only during the previous government regime and the State government is running the show just by appointing part-time and guest lecturers all these years.

However, as the tenures of part-time and guest lecturers is very limited period and they tend to get terminated after a certain period, so far, the state government has not filled any lecturer posts either in junior colleges, degree colleges or post graduate colleges even though two months have passed having began the current academic year.

Earlier, though the government had started the appointments of guest faculty in junior and degree colleges, the process has been halted at the final stage of recruitment due to legal tangles. With this the students’ particularly in Junior colleges are facing tough time as there is no proper teaching faculty available for them to teach important subjects.

“We have a shortage of 4-5 teaching faculty in our college, however, we are managing it with temporary faculty for the time being, but in the long run we need at least 4-5 permanent lecturers to teach important subjects like Chemistry, Physics and Botany,” said Krishna, principal of Government Junior College Jadcherla.

The major shortage of faculty has been witnessed only in the recent days after the government allowed the transfers of lecturers from one college to the other. Post transfers, in majority colleges, 40-60 per cent of faculty have got transferred to other districts in and around Hyderabad.

In degree colleges, there are 410 lecturer posts in all colleges across erstwhile Mahbubnagar, of them 96 are full-time permanent lecturers and about 167 are faculty working on contract or outsourced basis and the remaining 147 vacant posts are being filled by guest lecturers and part time lecturers.

At PG level, where there are 4 major post graduate colleges in Mahbubnagar, Wanaparty, Kollapur and Gadwal, the government had sanctioned 16 posts of professors out which only 4 are appointed and 12 posts are still vacant. Similary out of total sanctioned posts of 32 Associate professors only 1 post is filled with the said faculty, however, 31 other posts are still left vacant.

At present the Palamuru University got a sanction of 64 posts of Assistatn professors, of them the government had filled 18 posts, while there maining 46 are still left vacant.

The main reason for not filling all these vacant posts is because of lack of adequate funds by the government to fill these posts. Therefore, instead of filling up these posts, the government is running the show by appointing temporary lecturers, however this kind of attitude by the government is impacting on the quality of education in the district.