Hiring delay leaves 74 per cent faculty posts empty in Telangana State varsities

Nearly 74 percent of teaching posts in Telangana’s 11 State universities, including Osmania University, remain vacant despite the government issuing recruitment guidelines five months ago. The faculty shortage has severely impacted teaching, research, and funding prospects across campuses

Hyderabad: It has been five months since the State government issued guidelines for recruiting assistant professors in universities, yet there has been no progress in hiring, with nearly 74 percent of posts lying vacant. Only 753 regular faculty members are working out of 2,878 sanctioned posts in 11 State universities, including the famous and oldest Osmania University (OU).

As per information available with the Education Department, which compiled the data till August 2025, OU has a staggering 74 percent teaching vacancies, with only 331 teachers available out of 1,267 sanctioned posts.

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The worst is the case of Palamuru University and Rajiv Gandhi University of Knowledge Technologies, where there are 86 percent vacancies out of the total sanctioned posts.

This dearth of teaching staff has left the university colleges struggling to meet regular teaching requirements, research commitments, and funding conditions from various central funding agencies.

Most universities are facing a shortage of teaching faculty at the professor level. Almost 12 to 13 OU departments have no professor to teach students. A similar situation prevails at Kakatiya University, where nearly 10 departments have no professors.

“Faculty are the backbone of any university. The lack of faculty will adversely impact the quality of teaching and students, particularly those from rural backgrounds. Funding agencies will not release funds to universities if they fail to maintain the teacher cadre ratio,” said Prof. T Tirupati Rao, former Vice-Chancellor of OU.

The government had issued guidelines on April 4 this year, detailing weightage for academic record and research performance, domain knowledge and teaching skills, and interviews. As the State government failed to take up recruitment, universities have been employing academic consultants (contract teaching staff) and part-time teachers.

“Due to lack of regular faculty, PhD supervision and research activity have taken a hit, as only regular teachers are allotted PhD candidates. Further, the teacher cadre 1:3:6 (professor, associate professor, and assistant professor) ratio has taken a heavy beating as there are no new regular faculty appointments,” said Prof. B Manohar, president, Osmania University Teachers’ Association.

Further, almost half of the existing regular teaching staff, for instance at OU, are performing administrative duties alongside their academic responsibilities.

“The recruitment has been delayed due to various issues, including the earlier regularisation of contract teaching staff. There are also representations to amend GO MS 21, giving 30 marks weightage for PhD as per UGC guidelines, against 10 marks prescribed in the order. We will speed up the recruitment process,” a senior Higher Education Department official said.

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University	Sanctioned posts	Working
Osmania University	1267	331
JNTU Hyderabad	410	144
Kakatiya University	409	77
BRAOU	93	24
Telugu University	77	13
Telangana University	152	61
Mahatma Gandhi University	70	35
Palamuru University	136	19
Satavahana University	63	16
JNAFAU	55	14
RGUKT	146	19
Total	2878	753