Telangana Professors Turn Delivery Boys as Core Engineering Seats Plummet by 70% | Hyderabad News

HYDERABAD: A more than 70% drop in core engineering seats in Telangana since 2020 has pushed its faculty onto the streets – quite literally.
From being senior professors, armed with postgraduate degrees and decades of experience, many of them now work long hours as delivery executives, dropping off food and groceries to people’s homes. There are also those running roadside bajji stalls to make ends meet.
Their remuneration: About Rs 500 to Rs 1,000 a day – a sharp drop from the Rs 40,000 to Rs 1.5 lakh monthly salaries that they drew as teaching faculty of engineering colleges. While some are marginally better off, working as freelance teachers or outsourcing employees, many continue to be unemployed, even about two years after they were abruptly laid off.

Currently, Telangana has 86,943 engineering seats, which are filled through EAPCET. Of these, 61,587 are in computer science and alli- ed branches. Meanwhile, civil, mechanical, and allied branches collectively offer just about 7,458 seats, even as the share of electrical and electronics is hardly 4,751 seats.
Despite these limited seats in core engineering, about 25% remain vacant every year. Predictably then, between 2020 and 2024, as the wave shifted from mechanical, civil, and electrical to AI, data science, IoT, and cybersecurity, most of the 175 B Tech colleges in Telangana cut down their core engineering seat strength by 50% to 75%.

Faculty forced to do odd jobs as they struggle to survive

The result: The faculty teaching these courses have either been shown the door or asked to settle for a pittance. “I quit when I was asked to take a 50% pay cut on my already reduced salary,” said Achyuth V from Ibrahimpatnam, who taught mechanical engineering at a city college. He now works as a delivery boy earning ₹600 (approx.) a day and doubles up as a two-wheeler taxi driver, when time permits, to supplement his income. “While I was initially making around ₹40,000, it was reduced to ₹20,000. Then, the management asked me to take another pay cut. I had to leave as there was no way that my family could survive on a mere ₹10,000 a month,” the father of two told TOI. His children, studying in class 7 and 8, are unaware that their father is working as a delivery boy.
While Achyuth interviewed with many colleges after resigning and tried his luck a t other teaching gigs, none of them worked out. “I found that many colleges either did away with mechanical engineering as a branch or reduced the number of seats to hardly 30,” he added.

The members of the Telangana Technical Institution Employees Association said unless the govt or affiliating universities come to their rescue, the faculty will continue to struggle. “Faculty, who are in their forties and fifties with years of experien- ce, are struggling to survive as neither academia nor industry is keen on utilising their services. After dedicating their life to teaching for decades, they are now forced to do odd jobs,” said D Srinivas Varma, general secretary of the association.
An official from the technical education department said from the coming acade- mic year, they are going to allow new courses or seats based on industry demand. “Even this year, we did not allow colleges to increase CSE seats in the place of core engineering and restricted maximum intake in a course to 120. In coming years, we are going to be more stringent and have a balanced approach,” said the official.