The district administration has placed the functioning of the professional colleges managements under scanner following continuing complaints being made by the students’ associations seeking checks and balances against dwindling standards in engineering education in the district.
The students joint action committee raised the issues of the professional college managements looking for commercial gains rather than striving for improvement of the higher technical education.
They alleged that some managements were running multiple engineering colleges in one campus by illegally encroaching government lands in the vicinity of the national highway 5 which passes through to the district.
The student leaders arrived in a delegation to the collectorate and made a complaint to District Revenue Officer S.V. Nageswara Rao.
The student JAC leaders Aditya Sai, Chandra and others demanded an inquiry by the district officials into the irregularities being resorted to by the college managements and initiate steps for the redressal of the students’ grievances regarding declining standards.
The major complaint against the managements was that most colleges were not giving priority to qualified and trained faculty. In some colleges, they were not providing faculty at all and they were showing names of those working elsewhere as employees in their campuses.
The students leaders deplored that the colleges were targetting those students who were asking for appointment of better and qualified faculty. The online attendance was being used to harass these students these days.
The students JAC appealed to the administration to cancel the online attendance system in engineering colleges and make sure that the managements do not collect high fees in the name of attendance deficit and other services from the students.
The discontent among the students’ community came as another blow to the college managements which were already suffering on account of reduced admissions in the wake of the parents and students’ increasing preference for colleges in the neighbouring Tamil Naidu and Karnataka.
As expected, the intermediate students are showing interest in appearing for IIT-JEE and entrance tests being conducted by various deemed universities from other states.