COIMBATORE: Anxiety gripped administrators and students of the five Anna Universities of Technology (AUT) in Coimbatore, Tiruchy, Tirunelveli, Chennai and Madurai on Friday, with the State deciding to “restore the original status of Anna University.”Announcing this in his address to the Legislative Assembly, Governor Surjit Singh Barnala said “Rather, creation of new Anna Universities in different places has weakened the Anna University, Chennai. It has only resulted in the creation of unviable institutions and has not improved its quality. Express was the first to report on May 31 that the government was planning to make the University an affiliating type institution and strip the AUTs of their affiliating powers. But, the Governor left the fate of the AUTs open-ended. Sources indicated that it would take a while for the Higher Education Ministry to spell out its policies and unveil a path for the transformation. Thousands of students are currently on the rolls of these institutions, particularly those pursuing distance education programmes offered by the AUT Coimbatore and a few other AUTs. Whether these students would have to migrate to a new uniform syllabus or would be permitted to complete their course under the existing norms is to be seen. Besides, some of the AUTs including in Chennai are in the midst of recruiting faculty members. The fate of the candidates who would eventually be selected and the current employees is now hanging in balance.The decision to grant affiliating powers to the premier Anna University in Chennai has several ramifications. One, the number of engineering colleges in TN has grown close to 500 and managing all of them under a single umbrella institution would be a difficult task.“Besides, the workload of teachers at the Anna University needs to be looked at. When the university was of an affiliating type until a year ago, several of its senior faculty members were burdened with inspections and supervisory roles. Research activity had suffered,” an academician said.However, R Ramaprabhu, professor for eminence, Anna University, argued that one way out would be to convert the AUTs into regional centres of Anna University. “The present V-Cs of AUTs could be retained as pro-vice chancellors in the different regions or as deans/directors after amending the statutes. The Indira Gandhi National Open University (IGNOU) functions on this model with regional centres in different States,” he pointed out.As for the standards of education, he said “the curriculum and norms for affiliating self-financing engineering colleges must be uniform across the State. While Anna University could the nodal agency for this, officials of the regional centres could be vested with the responsibility of inspecting and affiliating colleges as per uniform norms.”Such regional centres would ensure that college representatives or students need not travel long distances to get their grievance redressed. Instead, they can approach the regional centre directors.In fact, as early as 2004, the then V-C professor E Balagurusamy had suggested such a model and recommended a regional centre must be opened in Tiruchy.
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