With the dues mounting to almost ₹15 crore from the affiliated colleges, Andhra University has taken a few tough steps to bring the erring colleges back on the rails.
Every affiliated college has to pay some amount of fees every year for affiliation to the university and many of the colleges have not been paying for the last five years. To get its share, the AU has announced that such colleges will not be allowed to conduct the examinations if the dues are not cleared.
To give some leeway to the colleges, the 90-year-old State-run university is mulling the option of instalments to reduce the burden from one time payment, Vice-Chancellor Prof. G. Nageswara Rao told The Hindu .
The AU has about five engineering, 45 PG and 313 degree colleges under its fold.
Academic audit
With the growing complaints that the standard of teaching has come down, the university has formed an academic audit committee to study the scenario in the colleges.
“The academic audit team will not only examine the quality of lecturers, on what basis they were recruited and the teacher-student ratio, but will also oversee whether the mid-term and semester system of examination is adhered to, as per the norms. We will also check on the attendance of the students and the teachers. The students should have at least 75% attendance,” said Prof. Nageswara Rao.
To curb the menace of question paper leaks at some of its affiliated colleges in the recent time, the AU has made it mandatory that all question papers will be kept in the nearest police station and will be released and handed over to the colleges just one hour before the scheduled examination.
Extra seats
The university has also decided to enforce the seat quota stringently.
“No college will be allowed to exceed the number of seats allotted or sanctioned. We will give a leverage to the maximum of 20%. For example if the allotted seats for the B.Sc (Computer) is 60 for a college, then the college can admit a maximum of 72 students with the 20% leverage. Over and above the figure, the students will not be allowed to write the examination. Post admissions, the status of admitted students has to be ratified by the university authorities by the end of July,” said the V-C.
Last year, the AU faced a serious problem when a private law college admitted about 240 students against the sanctioned strength of 80 students.
Prof. Nageswara Rao hopes that by implementing the measures, the university will be able to rein in some of the erring colleges.
