Guest lecturers’ strike leaves colleges crippled
The Hindu
In many colleges, there is only one or a handful of permanent faculty for a subject, which has a workload of 70 to 80 hours
For more than 45 days, guest lecturers of government degree colleges have been on strike demanding job security. This has impacted teaching at colleges across Karnataka severely, as semester exams are fast approaching and a major portion of the syllabus is not taught yet. Many college authorities fear that too much time has already been lost.
Over 14,500 guest lecturers are staging protests in Karnataka. In many colleges, there is only one or a handful of permanent faculty for a subject, which has a workloadof 70 to 80 hours in a week. Such colleges are more severely hit.
“The students of core subjects such as Mathematics, Chemistry, Computer Application have great difficulty as the guest faculty in these subjects were on protest. The permanent lecturers are finding it difficult to manage as they are burdened with handling the entire syllabus in the absence of guest faculty,” said K.T. Krishne Gowda, principal of Government First Grade College for Women in Hassan. The college has more than 2,500 students. Among the teaching faculty in the college, only 40 are permanent, while 102 are guest lecturers.