The state government will soon appoint more guest faculty in government first grade colleges that require another 5,000 faculty members across the state, Higher Education Minister R V Deshpande said on Tuesday.
Addressing a press conference to announce establishment of centres of excellence in three engineering colleges in the state, Deshpande said the number of guest faculty in all 359 government degree colleges stands at about 10,300.
“Our government colleges have been making use of guest faculty for the last 10 years, but it has been done indiscriminately. The actual requirement of faculty is around 15,000,” he said.
The government will invite applications for guest faculty through websites and newspaper advertisements by June 14, he said.
“Admissions usually start around June and, sometimes, extend till August. We want to make sure students get the required training,” he said, “And we will place the faculty according to the workload and existing vacancies.” The minister said that in some colleges, lecturers have workload of just one hour.
Deshpande said the government owes Rs 52 crore to guest faculty towards their remuneration. “From 2010-11 to March this year, we are to pay Rs 52 crore. However, we have released Rs 27.89 crore already to Gulbarga, Dharwad, Shimoga, Mysore, Mangalore and Bangalore divisions,” he said.
Centres of Excellence
Three technical institutions in the state have been selected for establishment of centres of excellence (CoE) under Phase 2 of the Technical Education Quality Improvement Programme (TEQIP).
R V College of Engineering will get a CoE in Macroelectronics, PES Institute of Technology will get a CoE in Knowledge Analytics and Ontological Engineering (KAnOE) and Siddaganga Institute of Technology (Tumkur) will get a CoE in Applied Research and Nanotechnology.
“Each CoE will get Rs 5 crore out of a total TEQIP allocation of Rs 177 crore. The state’s contribution in this is 25 per cent,” Deshpande said.