Karnataka: Due to a dearth of applicants, aided college professors’ salaries have been withheld.

In a letter to the senior secretary of the department of school education and literacy, the Registered Unaided Private Schools Association of Karnataka requested that the salaries of lecturers at aided post-secondary education colleges that have been withheld be paid out right away.

The union has stated that inadequate admissions have been cited as the reason why the salaries of some teachers employed by supported colleges have not been paid for the last two months.

The director of Karnataka’s department of pre-university education sent out a show-cause notice to private aided colleges that had too few admissions. The notification asked the colleges to provide an explanation for why they should get funding.

The president of RUPSA, Lokesh T., states that assisted PU institutions are required to have a minimum of 40 students enrolled in each class; if this is not met, the colleges’ affiliations would also not be extended.

In one such letter, the deputy director of the department writes to Uma Pragathi PU Arts and Commerce College, Tumakuru, asking why the director of the department of school education (PU) shouldn’t be advised to stop funding them.

After PU institutions received show-cause orders demanding an explanation, Thalikatte claimed that teacher pay had been withheld.

The PU department has requested that assisted PU colleges in the state cease accepting new students for the forthcoming academic years if enrollment in any particular course or class falls short of the required minimum for three years in a row.

Rather than addressing the underlying source of the problem and raising the standard of instruction there, department officials are using the low number of admissions as justification for not paying lecturers. Since2015, the positions in assisted PU colleges have remained unfilled. Using available finances or their own salary, professors in a number of colleges are appointing temporary part-time teachers. If the quality of education is improved here by using scientific methods, as opposed to making sure that there are forty kids in each class, , the admissions are bound to improve. Not paying salaries to lecturers is unfair for them,” said Lokesh.