The College of Science and Technology in Andhra University was started in 1931 and is the oldest university science college in the successor state of Andhra Pradesh, post bifurcation.
College records some of the iconic personalities such as Sir C.V. Raman, Prof. S. Bhagavantham, Prof. C. Mahadevan, Swami Gnanananda and Prof. K. Rangadhama Rao to have walked its corridors. Today it is languishing for lack of quality teachers as faculty strength has come down to almost 20 % of its actual strength.
The college has about 28 departments and of which are some are rare and were among the first to come up in the country such as the Department of Nuclear Physics, Department of Meteorology and Oceanography, Department of Geo-Physics, Geology and Delta Studies.
From a strength of about 320 it has come down to 96 and in another few months it will drop below 90, said Registrar V. Umamaheswara Rao.
The scene is so bad that some of the departments are just managing with 1 or 2 full-time faculty members, said a student of M.Sc Geophysics.
The Geo-physics department has a sanctioned strength of 17 and the existing strength is 6.
The sanctioned strength of meteorology and oceanography is 18 and the current strength is 5, for nuclear physics it is 20 and the existing is 3, for organic chemistry the sanctioned strength is 9 and the existing is 1 and for zoology it is 25 and 6.
The overall picture across the departments in the university is bleak.
The total requirement for the university is about 1,080 and it crosses the 1300 mark if the new self-financed courses are taken into consideration.
But compared to the required and sanctioned strength, the overall existing faculty including senior and junior professors is 383.
The college has a total strength of nearly 2106 students and about 800 research scholars spread across different departments and there is huge mismatch in the student-teacher ratio, said a PG student.
