Poor faculty haunts engineering colleges in Andhra Pradesh

Kakinada: Engineering colleges in the state getting ready for admissions for the current academic year, are handicapped by poor facilities and under- qualified faculty members.

The process of admitting students into the engineering colleges affiliated to the JNTU-K has started for this academic year. The certificates of verification will be done on June 7 for the students. The educational standards in most of the colleges under JNTU-K are not up to the mark.

The attempts to improve teaching in these colleges have not yielded the desired results so far. Most of the colleges don't have advanced labs or libraries well-stocked with the latest books on engineering. The much publicised concept E-learning is not visible in many of the colleges.

There are also many students from rural background who need special attention, but the colleges do not have qualified, competent faculty members.

According to All India Counsel of Technical Education norms, the principals should have Ph.D Degree. But, most of the engineering colleges don't have it.

Engineering subjects should be taught by post graduate qualified teachers. But, in nearly 125 colleges, graduates are teaching under graduates resulting in poor quality teaching.

In these circumstan-ces Eamcet qualified students are searching for suitable engineering colleges. Meanwhile some of the colleges are luring the students with different offers such as free books and fee concessions.

The inspection committees have given reports which don't really reflect the actual condition of the colleges. On the basis of reports the university authorities were obliged to give pe-rmissions for the colleges to accept admissions. It is a fact that many of the engineering colleges are engaging graduates to teach the students.

“However, we are foc-using on improving the standards of education in engineering colle-ges,”' said the Director of Academic and Plan-ning K.Padma Raju.

Vice-Chancellor of JNTU-K V.S.S. Kumar said that position is much better now than in the past. He said that the University is focusing on e-learning, e-journals, upgrading the labs and facilities in private engineering colleges.

He said that he was focusing on faculty de-velopment programm-es according to the advanced technology and intensified efforts were being made to improve the standards further.