Friday, November 9, 2018

Colleges start courses without univ nod, ask for waiver of penalty
Siddharth.Prabhakar@timesgroup.com

Chennai:09.11.2018

University of Madras continues to find a host of irregularities in affiliated colleges, where students are admitted to unapproved courses, which are sought to be ratified by the syndicates citing the ‘future of students’. The university, which imposes a penalty of ₹5,000 to ₹10,000 per student admitted to such courses, gets requests a year later, asking for waiver of the penal fee, thereby whitewashing questions of quality raised by the university inspection committees.

The university is the regulatory authority to ensure quality of education in affiliated colleges by considering commensurate facilities like principal, teaching faculty, library and lab facilities, based on which it approves a certain student strength for the course. Approval is denied to colleges if deficiencies are found in any of these pre-requisites. The university, however, has found that some colleges openly flout approval norms. The degrees given to students in such courses are not valid.

In some cases, the university inspection committee itself failed to flag serious lapses on the part of the college, while reporting them to the syndicate.

For instance, a college in Medavakkam applied for permission to start a BSc Visual Communication course for the academic year 2018-19. Two committees inspected the college and gave a green signal. The university, however, later found that the official who was designated as the principal had actually retired from service but still held the post. This is a violation, sources said.

In another case, a women’s college in Red Hills admitted around 350 students for a course which had no approval. The university fined the institute ₹35 lakh, which was brought down to ₹3.5 lakh with a request to ratify the course in the interest of ‘upliftment of rural, downtrodden girl students’.

In a third case, a management institute which ran MBA and MCA courses for six years without proper approval, was fined ₹34.8 lakh. In July, they wrote to the university asking for a waiver of the penalty as they were in a dire financial condition due to dwindling admissions.

“Self-financing colleges don’t get grants from the government and hence don’t appoint faculty and principals. We are going to conduct a special drive to check this issue,” said P Duraisamy, vice-chancellor of University of Madras.

University of Madras

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