Tirupati: Public spending in higher education falls steeply

Tirupati: The drastic reduction in the number of fellowships being awarded by the University Grants Commission (UGC) has kicked up a row. Seeing this as a huge cut in expenditure on higher education in the country and demanding to increase the allocations, the Students Federation of India (SFI) has called for a nationwide agitation on Wednesday. It was learnt that the number of beneficiaries and amount of fellowships disbursed over the last five years witnessed a steep decline.

SFI district general secretary N Madhav said that following the intervention of CPM Rajya Sabha MP Dr V Sivadasan, the higher education department in the ministry of education has released a data with startling revelations. The data revealed that the post-doctoral fellowships awarded to students belonging to SCs and STs have come down from 554 in 2017 to 332 in 2021.

The post-doctoral fellowships for women have been slashed from 642 in 2017 to 434 in 2021. The number of fellowships provided to minority students has registered a 45 per cent reduction during the period.

Also, Dr S Radhakrishnan post-doctoral fellowships in humanities recorded a steep fall from 559 in 2016 to 14 in 2020. There was a 79 percent reduction in beneficiaries of teacher centric schemes and there were a meagre number of 14 beneficiaries for the UGC emeritus fellowship in 2020-21. Further there was a decline of 83 percent in the number of beneficiaries of Basic Science research fellowship.

The data also revealed the non-implementation of faculty reservation norms across the Central Educational Institutions and about half of the posts reserved for SC and ST are still vacant at the Central Universities while the vacant faculty positions range from 5 to 36 percent. The situation is no different in IITs, IIMS, NITs etc., while it is even worse in the Indian Institute of Science where a total of 28 out of the 71 sanctioned posts for the SCs and 11 out of the 19 for STs remain vacant.

The decrease in the number of scholarships and the amount of budget allocated for the expenditure on education figure into the larger concerted attack against public education, alleged the SFI. The reduction in fellowships directed towards vulnerable and marginalised sections of population is condemnable as it further makes education exclusionary and the central government should take measures to rectify the reduction in the allocation of fellowships.

SFI stages protest in SV University

Following the call given by SFI national leaders, Chittoor district SFI leaders also staged a protest in front of SV University administrative building on Wednesday. SFI district general secretary N Madhav, office bearers Prasanna and Urukundu have submitted a representation to SV University Rector Prof V Srikanth Reddy.

Speaking on the occasion, they condemned the attitude of Central government in discouraging research in higher education. They demanded an amount of Rs 8,000 towards non-NET fellowship to the researchers in different universities in the state. SFI leaders Ashok, Mahesh, Siva, Srihari and others took part in the protest.