MALKANGIRI : Even as model degree colleges were opened in the State last year in eight educationally-backward districts to increase the gross enrolment ratio of SC and ST students, these institutions have failed to serve the purpose. Many are facing large scale vacancies in both teaching and non-teaching posts and a case in point is the Government Model Degree College in Malkangiri town.
Set up in July last year, almost all the departments in the college are functioning without regular faculty members. The college has 64 seats each in the three streams of Arts, Science and Commerce. Of the total sanctioned 22 faculty member positions, the degree college has only six.
The entire Commerce stream does not have a single lecturer and so does Mathematics and Chemistry departments in Science stream besides, Economics, Sociology, Anthropology and Education departments of Arts stream. Departments like English, Odia, Physics, Botany, Zoology and Political Science are being run by one regular lecturer each.To manage the show, the college administration has appointed seven guest faculty members but the arrangement does not suffice.
Similar is the condition of non-teaching positions. Of the total 13 sanctioned non-teaching posts, there are only six in the college now. The college, since its inception, has enrolled 300 students in different Honours subjects in all the three streams, said the in-charge principal Srichandan Mishra.
Apparently, appointment to the principal post has not been done till date and Mishra, the principal of Government Junior Science College in Malkangiri, has been holding the additional post.
Even as the college administration has written to the Higher Education department about the vacancies, there has been no response so far.