Hyderabad: The Professor of Practice option, which was intended to get industry experts into teaching, is said to be misused by many engineering colleges in the city and elsewhere in the state, as they are said to be using this to get staff from ed-tech firms to teach emerging technology courses instead of hiring regular faculty.They said that, with not many trained faculty available to teach courses like artificial intelligence, machine learning, cyber security, Internet of Things, and data sciences, among others, in colleges, managements are either completely outsourcing teaching of these subjects to consultancies or taking help to teach them.“Except for top colleges, almost all others are misusing the Professor of Practice option. Instead of using it to enhance practical, skill-based learning by hiring experts, it is being used to bring people who are not well-versed in the subject to take classes,” said J Prasanna Kumar, who works at one of the top colleges in the city.Another faculty member, Srinivas Varma D, said that colleges, which generally ‘buy’ mini and master projects from consultancies, get staff from the same firm for a few days to teach some of the emerging tech subjects.“They are buying these services as a package. Right before mid-examinations, these so-called Professors of Practice come and take two or three classes and complete the subject. Here, students are at the receiving end, as a subject which is supposed to be taught in a semester is completed in five to six days,” he added, and said that more than 80% of engineering colleges in the state are violating this option.Faculty said that, incidentally, the same classes were shown as workshops by managements during the NAAC/NBA accreditation process.The managements, meanwhile, said they are forced to use this option as required faculty are not available to teach emerging tech courses.“We even tried to get experts from the industry. But the problem is most of them agree to be Professor of Practice only for designation and do not even respond to our mails and calls or come and take classes. In such a situation, we are forced to approach consultancies as their staff are working on projects and have knowledge about these subjects,” said a management member who is part of the Federation of Associations of Telangana Higher Education Institutions (FATHI).Officials from the Telangana Council of Higher Education (TGCHE) also confirmed that they received complaints on this issue. “We even issued legal notices to 4 consultancies or ed-tech companies as they are handling operations of some private universities. In fact, this misuse is mostly done in private, deemed universities and autonomous colleges. govt is seriously contemplating coming out with regulations to monitor these institutes as they are turning into degree-distributing institutes,” said V Balakista Reddy, chairman, TGCHE.
