No permanent faculty for geography dept

LUCKNOW: The Lucknow University's geography department, which has produced at least three IAS officers, half a dozen PCS officers and several National Eligibility Test (NET) and Junior Research Fellowship (JRF) candidates, has been running without any permanent faculty members.

The department, which has only guest faculty that comes in to teach its nearly 250 graduation students and 80 post graduation students, does not even have a head of department. And in the absence of the head, the university dean is the ex officio head of department. “But that doesn't solve anything. The students can’t go to the dean or the vice chancellor for every little problem. Since we teachers have no powers, we can't address the students’ issues,” said a guest lecturer at the department.

In addition to the undergraduate and postgraduate students, the other sufferers of this staff crunch are the research scholars who despite being enrolled at Lucknow University have to pursue their research under permanent faculties of other affiliated colleges.

Students also say that since all guest teachers are paid according to the number of classes they take, their timings at the department are not fixed. They come, take lectures and go. In such a case, if students have any doubts or problems, there is no official authority at the department to address their woes.

"There are six guest faculties at the department. We are paid Rs 400 for every MA lecture and Rs 150 for BA. Each faculty member can take a maximum of 40 postgraduate and 80 undergraduate lecture. In this way no one takes home more than ` 5,000 a month," said a guest faculty member at the department.

While the amount has been revised to Rs 400 per lecture for undergraduate classes from the new session, there still aren't any clues regarding permanent appointments in the department.