Acute faculty crunch hits Andhra University

Visakhapatnam: The quality of education in Andhra University may due to acute shortage of teaching faculty member. Despite getting sanction for recruitment process from the state government, there was no action taken up on those lines. In 73 departments of the university, there are about 549 teaching and 1400 non-teaching staff vacancies, which accounts to only 55 per cent of the sanctioned strength.

University officials said that most of the departments function with one professor and ad hoc faculty members causing major inconvenience in pedagogic activities. AU Registrar V. Umamaheswara Rao said that the state government appointed a committee to identify number of vacancies to initiate recruitment process. “Ad hoc faculty members are hired for the benefit of students. AP government has also taken a serious note of the staff crunch and we hope that the issue gets resolved at the earliest,” Mr Rao Said.

Even as the state government has given a nod to fill 281 posts vacant faculty positions, some professors felt that the sanctioned strength would make little difference. “Most of the professors in the university are on the verge of retirement. There will be severe staff crunch in a year or two,” a professor said. Meanwhile, sources said that the government contemplates on constituting a body on the lines of APPSC to fill up vacancies in various universities in the state. “AP government had formed a committee comprising vice-chancellors of Sri Krishna Devaraya University, JNTUK and Rayalaseema University to suggest a modality to fill the posts,” an administration official said.