‘Fees remained the same for more than a decade, expenditure went up’

Managing a university with more than ₹80cr deficit is difficult, but professor P Duraisamy, vice-chancellor of the University of Madras, tells Ragu Raman how he has been doing it and what could be the way forward

• Your open talk about financial crisis among the faculty revealed the situation the university was in. Why did you inform them?

I wanted transparency. I have nothing to hide. There were doubts whether we could pay salaries and pension at that time.

• What led to the financial crisis?

While our fees remained the same for more than a decade, expenditure went up. The recent crisis began after implementing the seventh pay commission. In one-and-a-half years, our expenditure towards salary and pension increased by ₹50 lakh. Every month, the additional commitment increased by ₹2cr towards the salary and ₹1cr towards pension.

• How are the finances now?

Since we don’t have enough savings as buffer, we will find it difficult to pay salaries in the coming months. The major deficit is in the pension account. The university has ₹320cr as corpus to pay pension to retired staff. We receive ₹27cr as interest and our total commitment towards pensioners has increased to about ₹60cr.

The difference has to be met through our revenue. But we are unable to make it. We have approached the government to meet the deficit in our pension account.

• Distance education is a major source of revenue. Did jurisdictional restrictions imposed by UGC affect finances?

Till now there is no reduction in revenue. But last year’s admission was down due to delay in starting the process. We were given permission in September and admissions began in October. As a result, the number of enrolments came down. Now, UGC is insisting on approval for ODL (open and distance mode learning) programmes. University of Madras is among the few universities to get approval and we expect admissions to increase in coming years.

• The university has recently hiked various fees. Will that be enough to tide over the crisis? What is the long term plan to make the university sustainable?

We are planning to introduce several diploma and certificate programmes, bridge courses through distance education designed to meet the market demands and skill gap. These courses are expected to generate revenue. We are planning to introduce online degree and certificate programmes that have no jurisdiction.