Shortage of teaching faculty hits private engineering colleges

Teachers handling subjects unrelated to area of qualification

The absence of inspections by the AICTE and Anna University, in view of the prolonged impact of the pandemic, has emboldened a number of private engineering colleges to force their truncated strength of teaching faculty to handle subjects unrelated to their area of qualification. Having eased out staff in substantial numbers over the last year, citing financial crunch due to the pandemic, managements of private engineering colleges have failed to restore the strength of their teaching staff ahead of the next academic year, since the need for handling practical classes does not arise in online education, a senior professor of Anna University said. The decline in the quality of teachers is bound to reflect poorly on the National Board of Accreditation (NBA), which is a signatory to Washington Accord that implies recognition of accredited programmes by other signatories. The colleges are indeed in a fix, since going by the announcement made by the AICTE in 2019, approval will not be extended to programmes of technical institutes that fail to get a quality assurance certificate and accreditation from the NBA, a functionary of a private engineering college management in Tiruchi said.