Govt-run technical colleges see 50% drop in number of teachers in 6 years in Gujarat

AHMEDABAD: Monday's death of an associate professor at LD Engineering College, who took his own life because he was "reeling under immense work pressure", points at the abject apathy towards teachers at the government-run technical colleges of Gujarat.
The state socio-economic review (SER) for the year 2022-23 reveals that the strength of the teaching staff in these colleges has almost halved over the past six years, leaving the existing teachers overburdened and exposed to a tide of mental health and social issues.
From 15,398 teachers in the government-run technical colleges in 2016-17, the number has dropped to 7,755 in 2022-23.
In many of these institutes, the teachers double as administrative staff and carry out additional duties of maintaining accounts, doing clerical work and other tasks such as overseeing admissions and collection of fees among others.
The SER, in its section, 'Number of educational institutes, sanctioned seats, actual admission of students and teachers in technical education in Gujarat state', has collated data spanning 42 years. In 1980-81, the state had 10 such institutes with 2,339 seats and zero full-time teaching staff. Today the state has 230 colleges, 76,688 seats and 7,755 teachers.
The data tabled in the SER reveals that in 2016-17, there were 238 institutes with the maximum staff strength of 15,398 - an average of 64.7 teachers per institute. The number of institutes increased to 242 in 2019-20, but the number of teachers plummeted to 10,342.
By 2022-23, the number of institutes stood at 230, while the strength of the teaching staff dropped further to 7,755 - making it an average of 33.6 teachers per institute and a decline of 49.6 per cent in the total number of teachers.
Significantly, the number of women teachers at these institutes dropped by 51% in six-years - from 4,915 to 2,415.
Officials in the department said that with more and more self-financed institutes coming up, the teachers have been opting for voluntary retirement from the government-run colleges in search of better pay and opportunities. This is a clear signal to the government that it needs to amp up recruitment and hire full-time staff, but instead, it prefers appointments on fixed pay, the sources said. The scenario in 2021-22 took a turn for the worse as 231 of these institutes had only 6,567 teachers. The shortage of teaching staff has also affected the quality of education, said academicians.
The data tabled in the Gujarat assembly reveals that the proportion of vacant seats in government engineering colleges went up from 21.31% in 2021-22 to nearly 50% in 2022-23.
M N Patel, the former principal of LD Engineering College, said "The student-teacher ratio should be around 15 students per teacher, but in some of the institutes, one teacher caters to 45 students. Besides the delay in appointments, there has been a delay in staff promotions too. The government also did not put measures in place for quality upgradation of teaching staff to make them eligible for promotions."
Congress spokesperson Manish Doshi said the teaching staff is forced to do work other than teaching because many technical colleges face shortage of administrative staff. The government data reveals that 276, 189 and 310 posts in Class I, II and III categories respectively were vacant .