Telangana University is far ahead of other state universities and is the only university among the newly-established ones to have three campuses and to offer PhD, says its registrar Prof. R Limbadri. In a chat with Express, he says the university plans to start an engineering college and introduce LLM course in next two years. Excerpts:
What are the major achievements of TU?
Eight years is not a long time for a university to achieve a complete transformation in both the academics and infrastructure. But I think, the Telangana University is far ahead of all the new state universities in Telangana. We had started PhD programmes three years ago much before other new universities did. And, we have three campuses. We plan to have MoUs with foreign universities. Recently, we sent a proposal to the University of KwaZulu-Natal of South Africa for a joint research programme. We are waiting for their response.
Usually, it is difficult for new universities to attract best teaching talent. Did TU too face this problem?
We have never had shortage of faculty. Currently, we have 82 permanent faculty members for 26 courses. We are also trying to recruit more keeping the future courses in mind. We had adequate teaching and non- teaching staff since the beginning.
Does the university have enough funds for the development of infrastructure and to introduce new courses?
Fortunately we don’t have shortage of ‘Plan’ and ‘Non-plan’ funds. This year, the government allocated ` 28.29 crore under non-plan budget. We sought `48 crore of the state budget, of which `4 crore has already been sanctioned. I think the existing fund allocation will help us sail through.
A majority of students of the university are from Nizamabad district. Is TU not able to attract students from other districts?
Due to the geographical reasons, there are more from Nizamabad district but the university is now increasingly attracting more students from other districts. Our faculty and better infrastructure will attract more students in future.
Are you planning to implement the Choice Based Credit System (CBCS)?
We are ready to implement it. But we are awaiting guidelines from the state-level committee formed for the purpose.