The mood is buoyant in Andhra University and there is every reason for it. The nine-decade-old university, the oldest one in the State, has made a quantum jump from the 69th position to 36th in the overall institution ranking by NIRF (National Institutional Ranking Framework) this year and in the university ranking, it has moved ahead from 43rd place to 22nd rank in the country.
But to score better was not an easy task for AU. Speaking to The Hindu , Vice-Chancellor Prof. G. Nageswara Rao said, “In 2015-16, we did not apply and in 2017-18, we did apply but there were some lacunae in our report . This year, we ironed them out and established a team of senior professors who worked for a year to put things right .”
But this in not the end! This year, AU is aiming to stand among the top 15, competing with top IITs, NITs and IISERs.
On how he intends to march ahead, the V-C said, “Primarily, Our focus is on building infrastructure. Last year, we spent ₹10 crore on infrastructure and about ₹15 crore on academics. This year, we have allocated about ₹25 crore for infrastructure building and almost an equal sum for academic development. We have already established about 75 smart classrooms in the campus, including in AU College of Engineering, and this year our target is to increase it to 130 . We have about 65 departments and our idea is to have at least two smart classrooms each .”
Apart from smart classrooms, AU also intends to increase foreign students’ strength from 350 to 600. “This is one of the most important parameters in the NIRF ranking,” he said.
This year about 1,100 new teachers will be joining the university and Prof. Nageswara Rao feels that it will enhance AU’s chances to the top slots. “Right now our student – teacher ratio is around 1: 25, post recruitment the ratio will become 1:19. As per NIRF parameters 1:20 is a healthy ratio and hence we expect to do better,” said the V-C. The V-C feels that the Centre for Defence Studies and Research that was started last year was not projected, but in this year it will be included and it will give the desired edge to AU in the coming years. “We expect about 5,000 defence personnel from the tri-services in the campus this year and we will be imparting 120 various courses,” he added.
Peer review
AU will now be focussing on people and peer review. “Last year ,we neglected this area and our score in this section was just 9.53 %. We will start a news bulletin and it will be distributed to alumni, research scholars, faculty and the students,” said Prof. Nageswara Rao.
AU also missed out on projecting the importance given to admission of students from economically and socially backward sections. “Last year, we could garner only 3.75 points out of a scale of 20, despite we having over 70% students from these sections. Our target this year is to garner 15 points out of 20,” he said.
Strong criticism
Despite all the work done, AU also faces a strong criticism from a section of the faculty and administrative wing. A senior professor alleged that the figures quoted in the report submitted to NIRF were skewed up. “The integrated courses in the AU were not shown in the report, as the student-teacher ratio would falter. Even the women’s engineering college was not shown. There are about 600 women students in the college without one permanent faculty member,” said a senior professor.
