Students protest over faculty shortage and irregular classes

NT Correspondent Bengaluru: The number of students enrolling for higher education courses is declining drastically but some manage to attend college despite facing severe economic crisis. However, the dreams of these government degree college students are being shattered, says AIDSO Bengaluru District President Apoorva. She addressed a massive protest at Freedom Park here in which around 300 students participated on Tuesday.

While speaking with News Trail, Apoorva said, “Degree classes started on August 1st, but they haven’t been regularized yet. Despite having around a thousand students in each government degree college across the state, only 5 to 8 permanent faculty members have been appointed. The odd semester exams are set to begin on December 9th, but the guest lecturers' recruitment, which starting with counselling in October, is likely be completed only in November. This leaves students with just a month of teaching before the exams.” Vishal B, a student from Government First Grade College, Peenya, highlighted the woes of students. “Since the academic year started, not a single lesson has been completed by guest lecturers. Only the permanent government faculty are teaching and they cover just 25% of the subjects.

For the remaining 75% of subjects, we have no teachers. With semester exams in November, we are worried about our ability to clear the exams.”" Several other students present at the protest said that despite financial difficulties, they attend college daily but are unable to learn due to the lack of teachers. They called on the government to address the issue immediately by appointing sufficient lecturers to all government colleges and ensuring regular classes. The students urged the authorities to take immediate steps to resolve the faculty shortage, fearing it would affect their academic performance in the upcoming exams.