Kolhan University is recruiting guest lecturers to make up for the dearth of teachers in the varsity and the colleges under it.

For under-graduate courses, the second series of interviews will start from October 21 and will conclude on October 22. The first phase of selection took place in August.

In the second phase, teachers will be recruited for political science, Urdu, psychology, geography, Hindi and history.

Like other universities of Jharkhand, Kolhan University, too, has been facing a teacher crisis for a long time and appointing guest faculty on an hourly basis is the only way to ensure that students don’t miss classes.

Neither the Kolhan University nor its constituent colleges have a single officially designated professor.

Associate and assistant professors along and the guest faculty take classes.

“The first phase of recruitment of guest lecturers started in August. The university will keep interviewing candidates for all 22 subjects that are offered. Since teachers appointment is the duty of the state government, we can only resort to temporary solutions,” said A.K. Jha, proctor and spokesperson for Kolhan University.

By the end of July, 302 teachers had applied for the post of guest lecturers.

The university will appoint teachers as per the requirement of the 19 constituent colleges. A panel constituted by the university will be responsible for the selection.

However, students feel that the government should try and appoint permanent teachers. “There are too many problems with guest teachers, though this is the only solution at present. Most of the time, guest lecturers aren’t paid on time and lose interest in their job. Most of the time, they aren’t available when the students need them. Also there is no continuity. These teachers are recruited for a period of one year. Most of the time the contract is not renewed,” said Mukti Sharma, a final year under-graduate student of LBSM College.