Bengaluru: The Ministry of Higher Education, whose budget has not changed for three years despite increasing requirements, forced to borrow funds from other government divisions to run or launch the program.
For example, the scheme distributes 1.6 lakh tablets to students, as part of the urge of digital education, executed with the assistance of funds from the Social Welfare and Backwards class.
Over the past three years, 2018-19, 2019-20 and 2020-21, the government announced the total allocation of RS 280 Crore for the Department of Higher Education.
“We really only received a third of this allocation to run the show,” claimed a senior department official.
Effectively, the amount released to the department is Rs 93 Crore.
The government in a row has failed to provide adequate support to the department, whose budget level remains stagnant even during the previous years 2018-19.
With a pandemic stretching state finances, it is impossible for things to increase dramatically for the department in the near future.
The state government must be mandator to set aside 24.1 percent of the budget for the SC / SC community.
This is one reason the Department of Higher Education tends to depend on the department of welfare for funds.
“What we are targeting is to use small money from various sources to install on our obstacles and bring big reforms,” said Deputy Minister of CN Ashwath Narayan, who oversees higher education.
He added that the government used technology solutions such as smart classrooms, learning management systems and tablets to provide quality education to students.
According to other officials, 2,500 smart classrooms are arranged by using RS 27 Crore from the Authority of the Carnataka inspection.
About RS 4 Crore is used to create a learning management system.
“For clean connections at government colleges, we urge internet service providers to help us through their CSR initiative,” the official said.
The department also faces staff shortages.
To manage the situation, he asked staff from technical universities to teach some technical material to students of pure sciences, trade and humanities.
At the same time, the teacher from the pure graduation stream was asked to cover language and social science in the field of engineering.
K’Taka: Higher Edu depends on other departments for funds
