Hyderabad: There are about 12 to 15 students for each professor who is a guide for PhD students at Osmania University. The ideal number should be six. There is a lack of professors, which has doubled the burden on those who are there. Admission for a PhD is also lagging behind for three years. The notification which was released last year is due from the year 2016.
There are only 450 regular professors when the required staff is about 1,200, and there has been no recruitment of staff since the formation of Telangana state. There is no properly appointed Vice Chancellor in any of the state universities either.
Explaining the difficulties professors face, one of them said on condition of anonymity that there are about 15 students who are pursuing PhD with him, of which three have recently finished their thesis and completed the process.
“If any new notification comes in, there would be more number of students added. If there are these many students with their own research, obviously the efficiency decreases as it becomes difficult to track the progress of each and every thesis,” he said.
The recruitment of professors would end many of the students’ problems too and better the quality of their work. “There are many students who are eagerly waiting for the pending notifications to be released so that they can pursue their PhD,” said a student.
The lack of seriousness regarding the education sector can be seen in the fact that there have been no Vice Chancellors in many of the state universities for almost three years. The notifications inviting applications for PhD courses which were supposed to be released back then are still pending. The last properly appointed VC was Ramachander Rao who had released a couple of notifications till 2016. However, everything is back to square one now as he has retired.
For more than six months, Osmania University is running with an IAS officer as incharge VC. University officials have no clue when there will be a full time VC appointed to look into issues such as recruitment and on-time notifications.
