MADURAI: The Joint Action Movement for People’s Education (JAMPE) has urged the state government to drop the move to introduce common syllabus for universities in Tamil Nadu claiming that such a measure would be detrimental to higher education.
The Tamil Nadu Higher Education Council (TANCHE) has recommended that a common syllabus should be introduced for all universities across Tamil Nadu. This initiative would result in suppression of democracy in academia, R Murali, Coordinator of JAMPE said on Wednesday. In the absence of any crisis, the internal motive of the government to come up with such a move was questionable.
The universities tend to create their own curriculums suitable for them with appropriate experts and discuss and implement them at several levels such as academic councils and syndicates.
“Even the University Grants Commission only suggests the design of the syllabus as a guideline and does not insist on sticking to it,” Murali pointed out.
Tamil Nadu has the largest number of autonomous colleges and they have been allowed to create their own syllabi.
The implementation of new common syllabus would completely disable their academic freedom which many autonomous colleges have been enjoying for the past 45 years.
While the number of autonomous colleges is on the rise, denial of autonomy in curriculum formulation is contradictory and confusing.
Imposing any uniform syllabus would certainly affect the overall quality of higher education in Tamil Nadu.