Oldest Engineering College In Karnataka Facing Shortage Of Permanent Teaching Staff

The 105-year-old University Visvesvaraya College of Engineering (UVCE), founded by Bharat Ratna Sir M Visvesvaraya, is one of the nation's top universities but is currently suffering from a serious lack of permanent teaching staff. Only 80 permanent teachers are employed at the college, which has about 4,000 students overall, including 2,800 BE and 700 PhD students. This goes against the 139 teachers who are authorised to work there.

Since 2007, no one has been hired as a permanent teacher, and the college has survived on guest lecturers. Additionally, the institution only employs 35 non-teaching employees, while having 203 authorised positions. An employee of the institution who wished to remain anonymous stated that once again, the college is managing with contractual workers.

According to sources in the Higher Education Department, UVCE Principal HN Ramesh recently complained about the staff shortage in a letter to the Principal Secretary of the Higher Education Department. The letter claims that non-teaching staff has not been hired on a permanent basis since 1995 and teaching staff has not been hired on a permanent basis since 2007. The letter states that there are no qualified non-teaching staff members in laboratories.

The University Visvesvaraya College of Engineering Bill 2021 was approved in December 2021 in order to transform the college into an autonomous organisation on par with Indian Institutes of Technology. However, the state has not yet named a director, the board of governors, or any members. This will aid in the creation of the senate and executive council as well as the selection of other officers.

The infrastructure has also had problems, as seen by the mechanical engineering department's students using labs at other universities after their department building collapsed in 2017. While there were also tenders issued, the reconstruction was estimated to cost Rs 85 crore.

The estimate was authorised by the Bangalore University Syndicate's finance committee before being approved by the state government. However, according to UVCE administration, Bangalore University is holding up the construction because UVCE is now independent.

However, considering these drawbacks, UVCE is performing well in the classroom. More than 150 organisations recruited students last year, according to principal HN Ramesh.