VIJAYAWADA: Andhra Pradesh’s expenditure on higher education has dropped below 0.5 per cent of the Gross State Domestic Product (GSDP) during the five years from 2014, the Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG) has reported.
In its report on the State’s performance higher education between 2014-15 and 2018-19 academic years tabled in the Assembly on Wednesday, the CAG pointed out that the percentage of expenditure had dropped to 0.25% of the GSDP from 0.47% while TDP was in power.
The report stated that between 2014 and 2019, the Andhra Pradesh State Council of Higher Education (APSCHE) conducted only five meetings between July 2016 and December 2018 as against 20. It was required to meet at least once a quarter. The APSCHE also did not prepare a prospective plan, annual plan, and financial work plan for the same period.
The CAG report was released after auditing all constituent colleges, 26 affiliated colleges under three universities: Andhra University (AU), Adikavi Nannaya University (AKNU) and Sri Venkateswara University (SVU). The audit was conducted between November 2019 and March 2020.
Referring to the pass percentage 2018-19 in comparison with 2014-15, the report stated that the number of students successfully clearing final year undergraduate examinations was not encouraging at AU and AKNU.
Stating that seven out of 26 test-checked affiliated colleges and five of nine constituent colleges maintained data on students progression to higher studies, the report stressed on the need to strengthen systems to maintain data at the university and college level. Additionally, the number of students progressing to higher studies dropped at AU and SVU, while there was a slight increase in AKNU, the report revealed.
The CAG pointed out that AKNU did not obtain any feedback from various stakeholders before designing the curriculum. On the revision of syllabus, the report stated that AU had last revised its syllabus for 19 out of 73 PG courses in 2015-16, accounting to only 26% of the total courses.
Meanwhile, the other two universities revised the entire syllabus for PG courses in 2016-17.
The three universities revised syllabus for UG courses and implemented it from 2016-17. Only 7% of colleges instead of 100% were accredited by the National Assessment and Accreditation Council (NAAC). Of the 676 colleges under the three test-checked universities, 623 colleges were running on a temporary affiliation.
The report stated that SVU and AKNU had introduced eight and 21 new PG courses, respectively, during 2014-19, while AKNU had introduced 12 new courses in the same period.The CAG report pointed out that colleges affiliated to AKNU made use of only 14% of ICT facilities in the teaching-learning process, while AU and SVU reported 89% and 86% usage, respectively.
Stating that there was a shortage of permanent faculty in the three universities, the report said there was no assurance that the faculty had the required qualification for teaching UG students in 19 of the test-checked private colleges. It reported that 281 teachers scored only 55% marks at post graduation level and only six teachers had a Ph.D. Additionally, the remaining 275 teachers did not furnish their qualifications of NET (National Eligibility Test) or SLET (State Level Eligibility Test) or SET (State Eligibility Test).
Pointing out that the evaluation systems of test-checked universities suffered from operational and monitoring inadequacies, the CAG report stated that AU and SVU had a student-computer ratio of 20:1 and 13:1 respectively as against 10:1 advised by NAAC.The infrastructure was also poor in the test-checked 26 affiliated colleges, the CAG report revealed.