Teachers get axed due to scarcity of students

HYDERABAD: Teachers are taking a hit due to the seat glut in the state’s engineering colleges. Many college managements have put teachers’ annual salary hikes on hold increments as a large number of seats, both in the convener and as well as the management quota, have remained vacant even after completion of the final phase of Eamcet counselling. Some colleges have been replacing senior faculty members with juniors for less pay.Speaking to Express, a B-Tech (IT) student of an engineering college located at Chevella said his college management has replaced eight of the 12 faculty members apart from three lab technicians in his department as the intake of students has come down.The college has 420 seats in five streams of study, but only 250 seats have been filled this year compared to 310 last year.This is forcing the management to adopt various methods to cut down expenses.It is the same situation in most private engineering colleges. Most managements are contemplating pruning of expenses.Teachers working in recently set up colleges are the worst-hit as a majority of the seats in these colleges have gone abegging. A physics teacher at an Engineering college in Patancheru told Express that his college has received no pay hikes for two years due to the decrease in admissions.He said he joined the college in 2009 when 147 seats out of the 240 seats could be filled, but this year the number of admissions has come down to 49.He said he joined the college for a meagre Rs 8,000. The management promised a hike of Rs 4,000 hike after a year but it hasn’t been forthcoming.According to the Department of Technical Education as many as 78,180 seats in the convener quota in engineering colleges have remained vacant -- out of a total of 2,04,869 -- after the final phase of counselling.AP Technical Colleges Managements Association head K Chiranjeevi Reddy said more than 80 per cent seats have remained vacant in the management quota.