Dir admits, says students preferred to get admissions from other places
By Ovais Gull
Srinagar: Even as the authorities took an initiative to open a campus in Leh for the wellbeing of students there, the varsity has failed to produce any graduate or post graduate students since 2015, thus putting a question mark over the quality and initiative by the administration.
As KU’s satellite campus at Leh started functioning from 2015 and applications for admissions in various programmes were invited in the same year, the admissions notifications are continuously being notified by the varsity.
Interestingly, sources told The INS that from 2015 to 2018, not even a single student has graduated or post graduated from the campus in spite of the fact that the admissions for the campus remained open for most part the year.
They confided to The INS that for academic session 2019, a small number of students were admitted in various UG and PG courses. According to sources, some of the students who have been admitted this year fail to fulfill the basic requirements. “Compromising on standard and quality at this campus is bound to earn a bad reputation to the varsity,” sources added.
However, reliable sources said that average annual expenditure, apart from permanent employees’ salary, on the campus is around 50 lakhs, which includes maintenance, electricity and water, honorarium of the hire and fire employees and salary of the contractual staff.
It has been reported that the varsity was facing financial crises since 2016. “The university has hiked the admission and other fees by more than 50% to overcome the financial crisis. The students bear the brunt of university financial burden. In a situation like this, the varsity is wasting its financial as well as human resource on a campus which neither generates any income for itself nor produces any output,” reports added.
Nonetheless, sources said the varsity was spending funds out of proportion on this campus.
According to sources, this campus in spite of being non performer gets five times more funds as compared to other functional satellite campuses (North and South) of the varsity.
This entire burden is finally on the fees of the students studying at campuses other than this campus, sources added.
Sources divulged that around ten permanent faculty members in different departments are in the campus who as per them enjoy sitting idle while as the other campuses are facing dearth of teachers and are run on academic arrangements.
“The faculty members draw huge salaries without contributing anything substantial to the society. The height of their insensitivity is that they maintain silence and are drawing salaries for doing nothing,” they said.
“All the rectors, appointed so far, for this campus, were either on extension or re-employment. The campus seems to have no other purpose than providing opportunities of re-employment/extension of service to the retiring or the retired employees of the university,” sources said.
Notably, the government has also announced a separate cluster university for Ladakh region, which is going to start from this year.
Meanwhile, Director of KU’s Leh campus, Prof Farooq Khan told The INS that no student was earlier ready to come to Leh campus and reason behind that was their cousin or some neighbour went to Jammu or other place to get education and later they also convince their parents to go there.
“I have joined as Director almost three months back and I connected to the civil society, Sarpanchs and others, organized programmes in schools and other places to give people an understand that what we are providing to the students,” he said.
He claimed to have succeeded in making the people understand, saying that more than 80 students are currently taking their education from the campus. “I am hopeful that the campus will flourish. We have integrated programmes which are needed the most. Leh is a tourist destination place and for that we have started MBA in tourism while as the faculty is also busy and are being utilized for the teaching purposes,” he added.
Prof Khan told The INS that hostels are other things have also been made functional.
About re-employment and extension of faculty members, he said there is a need of a senior person who is experienced. “In absence of experienced person, the campus will suffer. It needs a constant vision and one has to keep an eagle eye to make the things happen in right way,” he said.
