Staff crunch affects education at Kakatiya University

WARANGAL: The state government has, on several occasions, said  Warangal would be made an educational hub by setting up more educational institutions, including Indian Institute of Management, in the next academic year. However, Kakatiya University, one of the old and prestigious universities of North Telangana, is reeling under many issues.

Lack of a regular Vice- Chancellor since 2014, shortage of faculty in many departments and the absence of an executive committee have resulted in downfall in teaching standards in the university. Students also complain of the declining standards which is evident from the pass percentage acquired by the university this year. In the degree results which were released recently, only 28.40 per cent of students have passed across three districts - Warangal, Khammam and Adilabad. The degree pass percentage for the academic year 2014-15 was 33.97%. There are 550 degree colleges, 12 engineering colleges and 15 pharmacy colleges affiliated to the university, which has not been having a regular Vice-Chancellor for the last  two years.

After Prof. B. Venkataratnam’s tenure as V-C ended on May 17, 2014, no regular VC was appointed. Vikas Raj, R. M. Dobriyal and then Prof. B. Veera Reddy of Satavahana University were given additional charges as Vice-Chancellors. At present, IAS officer T. Chiranjeevulu is the in-charge Vice-Chancellor of the University.

"There are 24 departments in the university and all of them are short-staffed. In some departments, the situation is so worse that they do not even have attenders to help the faculty members. Ph.D admissions have not been taken in  for the last  four years. The state government says they are taking special interest in education but they have completely neglected the students’ future,” lamented B. Pavan Kumar, a PG student.

The University Engineering College,  which is on the KU campus, is in a worst condition. Students do not even have proper labs for their experiments. They are being taken to other private colleges for lab sessions. Warangal secured 95% pass percentage in SSC exam and stood at the top in the state but the university is being neglected totally by the authorities. KU scoring such low result urges the state government and university authorities to analyze their short comings and address them immediately.