AP notifies hiring of 1,523 university posts

Vijayawada: The Andhra Pradesh govt has issued notifications to recruit 1,523 faculty members across 19 state public universities and RGUKT, marking one of the largest hiring exercises in recent years amid an acute shortage of teaching staff.

The recruitment drive includes 1,020 assistant professor posts, 334 associate professor posts, 63 professor posts and 104 lecturer posts, along with 279 backlog vacancies. Applications will open on the common recruitment portal from May 18.

The move comes at a time when universities are functioning with a severe staff crunch, with only about 972 faculty members working against a sanctioned strength of over 4,300 posts.

Commissioner of higher education Dr Narayana Bharat Gupta said the recruitment process was initiated after extensive consultations and legal review. He said vice-chancellors collectively decided to take up recruitment in phases, beginning with 1,523 posts, despite larger vacancies.

Gupta noted that conducting recruitment for a very large number of posts at once could affect the quality of selection and create procedural complications.

However, the fresh notification has revived concerns over the stalled 2023 recruitment process, which ran into legal issues over alleged discrepancies in implementing reservation rosters and related policies.

Some aspirants and faculty members, speaking on condition of anonymity, said issues related to “post-based” versus “vacancy-based” roster implementation under the AP State Educational Institutions (Reservation in Teachers’ Cadre) Act, 2021, remain unresolved even now.

Aspirants also questioned why candidates who had applied earlier must apply afresh, and flagged the reduction in vacancies compared to the previous notification.

Gupta, however, said concerns related to sub-classification and sports quota implementation raised earlier had been addressed before issuing the new notification.