Colleges hire faculty to pass affiliation test

The inspections being conducted by affiliating committees of universities to determine whether to grant extension of approval to engineering colleges, have turned out to be a farce. Engineering colleges are openly hiring faculty from other colleges to meet the faculty requirement during the inspections. Professors, associate professors and assistant professors are being paid between `5,000 and `20,000 to be present at the college for a few hours during inspections.

There are complaints that some university officials are colluding with managements to grant approvals every year despite knowing very well that the faculty and infrastructure shown to inspection teams by the colleges are “hired”.

Managements often shuttle faculty from college to college

This practice is rampant in educational groups that run a chain of engineering colleges. Here, the management shuttles their faculty from college to college during inspections. Faculty members are being offered cash, family vacation packages etc. to get the job done.

The regulator, the All India Council for Technical Education, has laid down specific norms to check the “fake faculty” racket, but the universities granting affiliation to these colleges are simply ignoring them.

The colleges are carrying the fraud a step further and producing educational certificates of persons who meet the required qualifications for faculty, but who are actually working in IT and other sectors. These persons are paid up to `50,000 to produce their certificates and be present at the college during checks.

All the engineering colleges in the city are affiliated to Osmania University and JNTU-Hyderabad. The varsities are planning to introduce an “online affiliation system” to check unethical practices.

“The executive council of JNTU-H has approved online affiliation system wherein the entire profiling of faculty members will be done. This will give no scope for duplication of faculty or producing fake faculty. We have also decided to inspect all the colleges run by a single management on the same day to check shuttling of faculty between the colleges,” said Prof N.V. Ramana Rao, registrar, JNTU-Hyderabad.