The National Assessment and Accreditation Council (NAAC) has said the financial constraints that Jadavpur University is going through are affecting its infrastructure development and maintenance.

Recently, a council team visited the campus as part of the accreditation process. The council has now said that the small corpus is "affecting the financial stability" of the university.

Inadequate internal revenue generation in terms of student fees and an insufficient number of classrooms and space for laboratories in some departments are among the"weaknesses", listed by the six-member NAAC team.

NAAC has recommended bringing significant growth in internal revenue generation through fees and other avenues for sustainability.

The NAAC team, in its report submitted to the VC, said the university should work towards enhancing financial support from government and non-governmental organisations to gain financial stability.

NAAC has said JU lacks diversity in the faculty and students because most are predominantly from Bengal, the home state.

Inadequate maintenance of the infrastructure and the campus in general are also among the weaknesses listed by the team.

The university got an A+ grade in an evaluation by NAAC with a score of 3.46 out of 4, the results were released on Saturday.

In the last grading in 2014, it had ranked A+ with 3.68 out of 4.

A JU official said the financial instability that NAAC has referred to, prompted the JU VC Bhaskar Gupta to write to the higher education department last month urging it to raise the allocation for the 2024-25 academic year as the funds that have been sanctioned are “not sufficient to run the day-to-day expenditure of the university”.

Gupta's letter said the department has sanctioned ₹27 crore, but it should have been given at least ₹40 crore.

The university’s finance officer Debasish Pal said in a statement uploaded on the university’s website that the net deficit in the non-salary head (such as hostel and library expenses) was ₹21.98 crore for the fiscal 2022-23 and ₹19.89 crore for fiscal 2023-24 because of the gap in funds allocated and actual expenses.

"The crippling deficit that the university is facing has come in the way of extending support to the teachers, students, and scholars. The accrediting body awards marks based on these parameters as well. Our score has dipped because of this also," said Parthapratim Roy, the secretary of the university's teachers' association.

NAAC has said in its report that there are no provisions for institutional research fellowships, which, the accrediting body has said, resulted in fewer full-time research fellows in the university.

Poor internal revenue generation resulting from a fee structure has been a matter of concern, said a JU official.

In 2022, JU's finance officer Gourkrishna Pattanayak stated in the university's news bulletin that the fee structure was the lowest across all universities and institutes in the country.

At JU, the monthly tuition fees for undergraduate students in the arts, science, and engineering streams are ₹75, ₹150 and ₹200, respectively.

The fees have remained unchanged over the past 24 years.

The monthly hostel fee, unchanged for 50 years, is ₹25.

Calls and text messages to VC Gupta failed to elicit any response.

The university has been advised to start more self-financed courses in subjects of high demand and develop a healthy corpus.

NAAC has advised the university to improve the placement opportunities of graduating students of arts faculty by improving the language and communication skills of students through suitable institutional support.