Numerous teaching posts lie vacant at govt engineering colleges, raising concern over quality of teaching.
Sample this: LD Engineering college in Ahmedabad has 1,140 seats in different engineering branches. As per the All India Committee for Technical Education (AICTE), the college should ideally have around 80 faculty members to maintain the desirable teacher- student ratio of 1:15 for bachelor's course.
Despite being one of the oldest and popular engineering colleges, LD has half the number of faculties than required.
Currently, the college has 40 faculties-which puts the teacher student ratio at 1: 28.5 -almost double the ideal situation. The staff crunch in all government engineering colleges is hard-hitting as admissions to engineering colleges are set to begin soon in the state.
Like LD Engineering college, majority of the government engineering colleges have as many as 90% vacancy in posts of professor, assistant professor and associate professor. As per the information sought under the Right to Information, of 16 government engineering colleges, only three colleges have principals. The rest are making do with in-charge principals.
Similarly, of the sanctioned posts for 277 professors, only 25 have been filled up and 252 seats are vacant, 152 posts of assistant professors have been filled up against the sanctioned 540 posts.
Also, of the sanctioned 1,183 posts for lecturers, only 315 have been filled up, with 868 posts still vacant.
"LD doesn't have a problem as it is one of the biggest colleges and is in Ahmedabad. We have a number of visiting faculties and experts guiding students. But the situation in colleges in interior parts of Gujarat or small places would be serious as not many visiting faculties prefer to go to such colleges," said one of the senior faculty members at LD Engineering colleges.
Is the situation the same in private colleges? Vice-chancellor of Gujarat Technological University (GTU) Dr Akshai Aggarwal said that many private engineering colleges might not have principals and head of the department. "But the major problem they face is lack of senior and qualified faculties," he said. He added that GTU checks if the colleges have principals, but ensuring implementation of norms to improve quality of education is within the principals' purview.
With so many prime posts vacant, will students opting for engineering get quality education? "If colleges do not have enough faculties, the number of academic sessions, including both theory and practical sessions will suffer. We have received complaints that 90-day academic sessions in colleges are not completed. Sometimes, sessions are completed in just 40-42 days," Aggarwal told DNA.
According to experts, of the various engineering branches, marine and civil engineering face major faculty crunch. "With infrastructure opportunity growing in the market, not many civil engineers want to be in academics. Also, having a Master's degree is minimum qualification to become a faculty and not all students take up master's degree in engineering," said a senior professor at LD college.
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