Sunday, Jun 12, 2005
Sunday, Jun 12, 2005 |
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Staff Reporter
RUNNING AN `INDUSTRY': The president of the Consortium of Self-financing Professional, Arts, Science Colleges in Tamil Nadu, Jeppiaar (second from left), discussing emerging issues in engineering education with office-bearers in Chennai on Saturday. Others from left are Consortium vice-president R.S. Munirathinam; general secretary P. Selvaraj and vice-president, K.N. Ramachandran. — Photo: Shaju John
CHENNAI: The Consortium of Self-financing Professional, Arts and Science Colleges in Tamil Nadu will take up the issue of the reduction of 4,127 engineering seats in 51 colleges with the All-India Council for Technical Education and highlight the steps taken by individual colleges to rectify the defects so that status quo could be maintained in the number of seats. "We have asked individual colleges not to wait till July 7 (the time given to the colleges to intimate the Council about any steps taken to rectify the specified defects) but start the procedure straight away. The consortium by itself cannot take up the issue but can highlight the individual colleges' grievances. We are also trying to set up a corpus fund to help colleges upgrade infrastructure and meet the recurring expenditure so that they fulfil AICTE requirements," the consortium president, Jeppiar, told reporters here on Saturday. A meeting of the consortium was held to deliberate on the AICTE's June 6 notification which cited shortfall in the standard of education delivered by the institutions, especially the lack of quality and quantity among the faculty and inadequate infrastructure, as the reason for reduction in seats. A delegation of consortium members would leave for New Delhi to appraise AICTE members of the issue, Mr. Jeppiar said.
Fewer seats
"The Council's appraisal teams should have given us enough time to make up for deficiencies. While most colleges start recruitments only after January, the Council had finished inspection before that. As it is, while there will be fewer seats in the first year, the same number of seats continue for the succeeding years, which is an anomaly. Also, fewer seats mean lesser fees to pay our teaching staff." Self-financing colleges constituted an `industry' worth several crores of rupees which produced several thousand software engineers every year and the AICTE should have taken this into consideration, he said. While welcoming the Tamil Nadu Government's decision to scrap the common entrance test for admission to professional courses, the consortium passed a resolution urging the Government to fix a mere pass in Plus-Two as the eligibility criteria for such admissions. Members also expressed apprehensions over the AICTE's insistence that only candidates who have passed Ph.D or M.E should be appointed as faculty. "There are only 1,400 Ph.Ds in India so far and most of them prefer to join universities or IITs. If the Council considers Ph.Ds and M.Es an absolute necessity, then they should give us a five to 10-year period to fulfil that requirement. We will seek the Council's permission to recruit Ph.Ds from IITs and Anna University on a part-time basis, if required till then," Mr. Jeppiar said The consortium would also aim at reducing imports of hardware used by the colleges and produce them locally. On admissions to management quota seats, he said they would await specific instructions from the Justice S.S. Subramani Committee.
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