Bhubaneswar, Sept. 18: The morale of the teaching staff at Ravenshaw University, Cuttack, seems to have hit rock bottom.

Frustrated over the increasing workload, lack of infrastructure and poor institutional support, around six faculty members have left the varsity in the last one year. If sources are to be believed, a few others are also looking for greener pastures.

“If I get a better opportunity, I would not think twice before putting in my papers,” said a senior faculty member of Ravenshaw, which attained the status of a university in 2006. At that time, the state government had sanctioned 153 teaching posts but not all were filled up due to various reasons.

Teachers, though, argue that 153 teachers for 8,000-odd students does not match up to the required teacher-student ratio of 1:20, as prescribed by the University Grants Commission (UGC).

“The university has been struggling with the teacher shortage crisis for long. Now, with revision of the syllabi and introduction of new courses, the number of classes has gone up, which means extra burden on us,” a teacher said.

Many others complained of substandard facilities on the campus. “Forget privacy, we don’t even have a place to sit and read during break time. There are neither any lockers for us to keep our books and files nor proper access to the Internet. Under these circumstances, we are forced to think of other options,” said another teacher.

Alleging that the government was not paying due attention to the “young” university, they said they were silently suffering. “The commerce and political science departments are the most neglected in terms of faculty strength. While the former has four teachers for nearly 1,500 students in different batches, the latter has to make do with just six faculty members for 1,000-odd students,” university authorities said.

No wonder, students of different departments have been staging demonstrations from time to time, alleging that teaching vacancies have affected their studies.

“Journalism and mass communication is a technical course and as per UGC norms, there should ideally be one teacher for 10 students but that is not the case here,” said university vice-chancellor B.C. Tripathy.

He, however, denied that there was a growing sense of resentment among teachers. “It hasn’t come to my notice yet. No teacher has quit out of frustration. Only a couple of teachers, who had come to Ravenshaw on Central deputation, have returned to their parent institutions,” he said.

Tripathy said at the beginning of this academic session, around 35 to 40 retired teachers had been appointed as visiting faculty for one year to ease the workload of the existing teaching staff.

He said the university authorities had requested the government to release an additional 254 teaching posts four years ago. “But the proposal has been pending with them till now,” said the vice-chancellor.

“Ravenshaw has lost its previous glory since a long time. There are neither sufficient teachers nor classrooms. If we want to upgrade it to a good university and attain excellence, appointment of teachers and improvement of infrastructure are the first steps towards achieving that goal,” he added.