Private HEIs in Telangana continue to break rules?

Hyderabad: The faculty and students of private universities and unaided private colleges continue to face the same problems. There is no let-off in the situation, even after the change of guard in the State.

S Raghuram (name changed), working as a faculty in the computer sciences department of a private engineering college that turned into a university, pointed out, "implementation of regulations of Telangana State Private Universities (Establishment and Regulation) Act, 2018, and the University Grants Commission -1956, as well as, the several directives of the UGC and the All-India Council of Technical Education (AICTE) are least bothered about."

The State-run universities and colleges find it difficult to launch new courses as they have to recruit faculty and provide the necessary infrastructure. Private universities and unaided colleges are always at the forefront of introducing new courses.

For example, several colleges have introduced new area courses like IoT, Data Sciences, AI and ML. Some colleges have even surrendered their seats in existing courses to introduce new courses. The new courses could be offered at a premium price in addition to the prescribed fee fixed by the State Fee Regulation Commission. It was against this backdrop that more private institutions have come forward to introduce BSc (Agriculture) when compared to government colleges. When contacted a former top official of the Telangana State Council of Higher Education (TSCHE) said, "the State government has power under the regulations of the TSPU Act to call for a report from any private university established under it." However, except for issuing a name-sake notice to two private institutions, there was no single instance from the State Higher Education department to act on complaints or issues highlighted on alleged irregularities in private universities, "be it collection of amounts in addition to fee fixed by the State Fee Regualtion Authority or payment of salaries to the faculty," says N Natarajan (name changed), a faculty member, Department of Humanities and Science, working in a private university, that hit headlines recently following students staging protests.