BENGALURU: A severe shortage of teaching and non-teaching staff has crippled the functioning of universities in the state. While older institutions are seeing an acute shortage of faculty, newly carved universities are functioning without adequate teachers or government funds. This has forced new universities to steeply increase the fee structure, leading to lesser enrolment of students.
Reputed and premier universities, including the University of Mysore, Karnatak University in Dharwad and Mangalore University, are facing nearly a 70% shortage in teaching staff. With no recruitment at regular intervals, these institutions are largely dependent on guest faculty. But this has led to lack of accountability, impacting the quality of education, academics say.
Also, five out of 32 state universities do not have full-fledged vice-chancellors, as per information provided by Higher Education Minister Dr MC Sudhakar during the ongoing winter session of the Legislative Council in Belagavi. He was replying to an unstarred question by BJP MLC CT Ravi. Bangalore University, which was trifurcated a few years ago, has been affected severely.
During its previous tenure, the BJP government implemented ‘One District, One University’ policy that created several district universities that were carved out of existing universities.
Of the ten such universities formed, including in Koppal, Kodagu, Haveri, Bagalkot and Hassan, all, except the one in Bidar, were found to be not viable. The government has since decided to merge these universities back with their parent institutions. But there is a stiff opposition to that.
Sources in the Higher Education Department said the state government created new universities and passed Acts governing them.
‘New varsities set up without bylaws’
But since bylaws were not formulated, which are essential for these universities to function, there has been a lot of confusion. The government had earlier appointed lecturers to colleges that later became new universities.
“These lecturers cannot be transferred to any other government college or university. But as no bylaws are formulated, they are in a dilemma,” he explained.
Adding to the confusion is the difference in service conditions. The retirement age for government lecturers is 60, while it is 62 for university lecturers. Government lecturers are covered under the Old Pension Scheme, while university lecturers fall under the New Pension Scheme. Some have even approached courts.
Sources said that after new universities were created, the government stopped providing grants, forcing them to manage expenses independently. Because of lack of funding, universities increased student fees steeply, resulting in a sharp decline in enrolments for undergraduate courses like BA, BCom and BSc.
This particularly has affected students from economically weaker sections. “The government created new universities without providing grants or infrastructure. There is no clarity on the status of both teaching and non-teaching staff,” the sources added.
