Karnataka: Teacher posts vacant, PU students in a fix

Bengaluru: Several government pre-university colleges across the state are running short of teachers as more than 2,600 posts are lying vacant. Students have been compelled to either learn on their own or go for tuitions.

The recruitment process started in 2015, but two years later, the Pre-University Education (PUE) Department is yet to fill all the posts. The state has 1,269 government colleges and 12,000 posts sanctioned by the Department, but over 2,600 posts are still vacant. 

Primary and Secondary Education Minister Tanveer Sait had said that the technical team is trying to resolve the issue soon, but the students continue to struggle.

A government college principal, Dhinkar (name changed), said, “We were asked to recruit part-time teachers as there is a shortage of teachers in many departments.”

According to information from the PUE Department, there are 11,87,174 students in first year and second year PUC (Arts – 3,35,571, Science – 3,95,916 and Commerce – 4,55,687). As the demand for commerce courses has increased over the last few years, the stream has seen the highest staff crunch.

Mr Sait said, “As the demand for commerce has gone up, we are shifting the teachers’ posts from Science to Commerce and filling up the vacancies. I think by February-end, all the teacher and principal posts will be filled.”

Business, Kannada and English studies are next, with over 250 vacancies. Not just teachers, some PU colleges don’t even have principals.