Andhra Pradesh govt. urged to establish Academic Staff College

Pvt. Engg. college managements flag thorny issues

Members of the Andhra Pradesh Private Engineering Colleges Managements’ Association on Wednesday urged the authorities concerned to establish an Academic Staff College in the State.

In an interactive session with Chairman of AP State Council of Higher Education (APSCHE) K. Hemachandra Reddy, they highlighted disruptions and paradigm shifts in the education sector and demanded faculty development on a regular basis. They said the high cost of training involved was a challenge to individual institutions and therefore an Academic Staff College that could source finances from Central funding agencies would help a great deal in addressing the issue.

Steps to ensure that the results of re-evaluation of answer sheets applied by students were announced within 15 days, and a plea to do away with the system of collecting branch-wise or student-wise affiliation fee and instead ask Universities to collect ₹10,000 affiliation fee per college were their other demands.

The members flagged other key issues such as collection of the University Common Service (UCS) fee from colleges. They said since the colleges did not receive any services in return and moreover, colleges had not been collecting UCS fee since 2019-2020, the universities should stop collecting it from the college, they said.

They said institutions with recognised research centres should be allowed to admit prospective scholars at the college-level through open notification as advised by the UGC regulations. They also insisted the council to consider appointment of senior faculty working in private engineering colleges on Board of Studies, Academic Council, Governing Bodies, inspection and selection committees.

The association members also sought permission to start Degree and PG courses in emerging areas such as Artificial Intelligence (AI), Internet of Things (IoT), Block Chain, Robotics, Quantum Computing, Data Sciences, Cyber Security, 3D Printing and Design and Virtual Reality (VR).