BHOPAL: Amid protests by guest scholars demanding regularisation, a pertinent question raised by some of them is about alarming student teacher ratio in colleges in Madhya Pradesh.
According to official figures there are only 4,407 teachers including assistant professors, associate professors and professors posted in colleges across the state whereas there are more than 23 lakh students in these colleges.
According to HED about 11.78 lakh students have taken admission in first year in various courses across the state in government colleges.
Till now department did not used to keep exact numbers of students in second and third year but average provided by department sources puts it to around 12 lakh. The overall strength of students in government colleges across the state is around 23.78 lakh.
Skewed ratio flouts UGC norms
“Higher education department (HED) is stressing on providing quality education for students but is it possible with such a student-teacher ratio,” asks DP Singh, whistleblower on issues related with higher education.
“According to UGC (University Grants Commission) norms average student teacher ratio should be 45:1 whereas in Madhya Pradesh this ratio stands at 539:1,” he added.
“HED needs to balance the teacher student ratio first. The ratio of 539:1 should be brought down to at least 100:1 if not strictly abiding the UGC guidelines,” said UC Jain, retired additional director of HED.
“HED has 8065 sanctioned posts for teaching. This number needs to be increased drastically if government is really serious about its objective providing quality education,” he said.
Senior profs given charge of principal: The problem does not stop here; most of the senior professors are given charge of principal thereby further reducing numbers of faculty members, said a senior official requesting anonymity.
There are 1,405 colleges across the state and more than 1,300 colleges do not have regular principals and are run by in-charge principals. Higher education department should immediately appoint regular principals for colleges so that the faculty focuses on teaching. Moreover, regular principals only could improve functioning of the colleges, he added.
