Demanding regularisation of their services, the guest lecturers in the state continued to register their protests in Freedom Park on Thursday, January 5. Colleges and universities are suffering at their expense. With exams and the stress of completing the curriculum on a tight deadline, students and the administration are left in a lurch, stated a report by The New Indian Express.
The long stand-off with the state will also affect the performance of the students as colleges reportedly look at moving their examination dates if the situation persists and some have no idea how to work around this situation. Several student-led organisations also protested against the strike by guest lecturers as a month has gone by without any classes being conducted in various government colleges in the city and on the outskirts.
“Since 50 days no classes have taken place and we are struggling. The college announced exams for January 23, 2024, but not even half of our curriculum is completed. With a strength of 1,300 students only 300 come to college because of the strike. We are trying to prepare for exams by watching online videos and learning from YouTube,” said Lokesh DV, a final-year student studying commerce. He added that the college is also not willing to change the exam dates.
VCs speak up
Speaking to The New Indian Express, L Gomathi Devi, Vice-Chancellor, Maharani Cluster University said, “Around 140 guest lecturers are teaching at the university. So far only 30-40% of the curriculum has been completed another 60% need to be taught. Though we announced the exam dates, the courses are not completed, so we will not go ahead with the examinations.”
The VC added that the students in the commerce stream are the most affected. Most of the guest faculty is needed for the commerce students and the university is facing a huge problem now. With Science and Arts, permanent teachers have pitched in and over 60 per cent of the curriculum has been completed.
Colleges affiliated with Bengaluru University (BU) are stuck in a similar ordeal. With 17 colleges under it, the VC Jayakara Shetty M stated that they are facing some problems in addressing the concerns raised by colleges in completing the curriculum and not enough lecturers. “If the protests are not called off we are soon going to call a meeting with all the principals to decide the next course of action. However, at BU most of the guest faculty have been conducting their regular classes,” he said.
At Nrupathunga University in Bengaluru, the permanent faculty has been sharing the load of guest lecturers. “We have completed 90% of the theory classes and might face postponement by a couple of days. Fortunately, we started the semester quite early. We are conducting extra classes to complete the remaining curriculum,” said Srinivas S Bali, Vice-Chancellor, Nrupathunga University.
