Fill up vacancies in Karnataka varsities

Up to 90% of faculty positions are vacant

Universities in Karnataka are facing an acute shortage of teaching staff with 75 to 90 per cent of the faculty posts remaining vacant, forcing them to depend on guest faculty. The highest number of vacancies are in the prestigious Mysore University, the first varsity in the state and the sixth oldest in the country. A staggering 407 of its 460 sanctioned teaching posts remain unfilled. This is followed by Karnatak University where 386 of the 600 posts are vacant. While the government had shown great enthusiasm in establishing new universities at the rate of at least one in every district, it has woefully failed in providing the required infrastructure or faculty.

In most cases, existing colleges are merely being upgraded as universities without even the basic budgetary allocation to enable them to emerge as centres of excellence. In some of the recently established universities, not even a single academic post has been filled. The Dr Gangubai Hangal Music and Performing Arts University, for instance, has 15 sanctioned teaching posts. All of them are vacant. The situation is no better in the Dr B R Ambedkar School of Economics University. According to data furnished in the Council by Higher Education Minister M C Sudhakar, of the 3,987 sanctioned teaching posts in the 32 public universities in the state, 1,846 are vacant. This works out to an overall vacancy of 46 per cent. As some colleges do not have the luxury of guest faculty, they struggle to complete the syllabus. In some cases, entire subjects are not being taught.

The appointment of guest lecturers has led to an altogether different problem. Last year, about 14,000 of them went on strike demanding regularisation of service, better working conditions and an increase in their emoluments as they were paid a measly salary. When the government made an attempt to absorb the services of these lecturers, it found many of them unsuitable for their positions.

According to Sudhakar, the vacancies will be filled once the statutes concerning recruitment are approved by the Governor, who is also the chancellor of the universities. The minister’s claim that the quality of higher education is not affected by the huge number of vacancies only shows his ignorance of the ground realities. The government should immediately stop the practice of making ad hoc arrangements year after year. Instead, it should ensure that permanent lecturers with the required competence and academic skills are appointed so that the students do not suffer for no fault of theirs. The existing universities should be strengthened first, and the government should refrain from starting new ones unless it can equip them to impart quality education.