RGUKT – A Very Distinctive Grand Challenge

At RGUKT, annually 6000 rural students (as per the desire and vision of Sri Y S Rajasekhara Reddy, the then CM of the combined state of AP) were being admitted in to a 6 – year BTech programme with the first 2 years being the PUC followed by a 4 – year BTech as per the model created by Prof Raj Reddy, the then Chancellor.

On the invitation of the then Governing Council, Prof Raja Kumar joined as the first full-time VC of the university, in 2010 on lien from IIT Kharagpur, his parent institute. At that time the 6000 strong 1st batch and the 6000 strong 2nd batch students were in the 2nd and 1st year PUC programmes, respectively. The civil infrastructure creation was started in the campuses of Basara, Nuzvid and Idupulapaya.

The laboratories for PUC and Engineering, the faculty (except for 6 retired professors of Science and Arts re-employed from universities and colleges taken for content creation of the PUC programme), curricula, and academic regulations, administrative setup, supporting systems including the ERP were yet to be created for engineering. At that time, after 6-months the first batch students would be entering the 4-year BTech part of the programme and everything was to be created and put in place. He was the only engineering professor that too serving in the role of VC at RGUKT. Despite the challenges of huge starting intake, rural students and absence of other engineering professors at that time, having realized that it as a big opportunity to contribute a great and unique university, he took up an additional challenge of creating an IIT like university at RGUKT. Thus, the overall big challenge was to create everything, impart education, make the rural students employable at as high standards as possible and also provide placements.

Provided with the freedom, engaged himself immersively, he could help accomplishing the nearly impossible RGUKT dream fulfilled adopting several innovations and personal creations, against all the challenges faced by a typical state university, during his tenure of 5 years as VC. In his own words, what could be achieved was a university at standards better or at least at par with the best of NIT’s with many unique innovations. The first two batches of students exhibited performance at levels unheard of in the country. Simply, it was a near-impossible mission made possible that too in very high standards.