CHENNAI: The Tamil Nadu government’s decision to facilitate the establishment of private universities and allow foreign universities to set up campuses in the State will lead to the commercialisation of higher education, said the Tamil Nadu Government College Teachers’ Association.
Voicing his concerns, educationalist PB Prince Gajendra Babu has also criticised the State government for amending the Tamil Nadu Private Universities Act to facilitate the establishment of more private universities. The criticism comes after the UGC granted final approval to the University of Western Australia to establish its first Indian campus at Velachery in Chennai.
The association pointed out that more than half of Tamil Nadu’s 21 universities did not have adequate permanent faculty. “The University of Madras has only 180 teachers against a sanctioned strength of 515, while Madurai Kamaraj University has 202 against 405 and Bharathidasan University has 119 against 230,” he said.
Similarly, 188 government arts and science colleges have 7,198 vacant teaching posts, which have remained unfilled, the association noted.
Babu, general secretary of the State Platform for Common School System, said that the move would weaken public universities and dilute the government’s responsibility towards higher education. “Faculty supply in government universities and colleges has been woefully inadequate for more than a decade. This has affected the quality of higher education,” he added. “Allowing foreign universities is among the provisions of the National Education Policy and Tamil Nadu had now become the fourth State after Haryana, Karnataka and Maharashtra to permit a foreign university campus.”
The move was contradictory to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s emphasis on freeing the country’s education system from a colonial mindset and promoting an Indian education system, he said. “It will pave the way for reducing expenditure on public universities and, in the long run, public universities may gradually fade away,” he alleged. “TN’s tradition of social justice in education will be eroded if the government continues to encourage private universities.”
CPM state secretary P Shanmugam has opposed the permission granted to an Australian university to establish its presence in Tamil Nadu, alleging that it would undermine education rights, reservation and national sovereignty.
“Allowing an Australian university to operate in Tamil Nadu, without providing adequate infrastructure to government universities and arts colleges, is a serious attack on the right to education, reservation and the sovereignty of the country,” he said.