Southern States - Tamil Nadu   

Financial implications of colleges merger move

By K. Ramachandran

CHENNAI Sept. 6 . Even as student protests against the move to convert 67 government colleges into constituents of universities continued, an intense debate is going on among academic administrators on some issues of financial implications.

All affiliating universities in the State, have already lost part of their staple resources, after engineering colleges were removed from their control for being affiliated to the Anna University. The affiliating universities have lost out the course affiliation fee and the examination fee paid by the engineering colleges and the students to the Anna University.

At the same time, the universities are burdened with more colleges with nearly 3,500 teachers, many of them senior lecturers. As of today, government college teachers say, the universities would have to spend huge sums even for the upkeep of old buildings and campuses in the 67 institutions.

Today, the Madras University gets about Rs. 1.5 crores as a block grant, the Madurai-Kamaraj University about Rs. 3.4 crores, and the Alagappa University Rs.1.55 crores, while the Bharathiar and the Bharatidasan Universities get nil block grants (apparently they have become self-supportive in funding). The grants, calculated on the basis of the net deficit in accounts, however, cover only 11 to 12 per cent of their total expenditure. The rest of the funds come from examination fees and course fees in the distance education mode, according to university administrators. It remains to be seen whether this position will be altered after the delinking of engineering colleges.

However, a report prepared by the TN State Council for Higher Education noted that the deficit in any given year did not truly reflect the university's financial position, especially when it did not set apart the pension contribution, which got postponed to subsequent years.

While it might be argued that all that the Government needed to do was to divert the money now spent on colleges, to the universities, the fact remained that 1,000 vacancies in teaching posts should be filled. The Chief Minister has already assured teachers that the Government would protect their salary increase, pay and terminal benefits. But, the question of recruitment of teachers needed to be addressed.

The TANSCHE report also mentioned that university expenditure on library and publications was far too little.

Perhaps, a wayout was to give autonomy to more colleges so that they could access special UGC funds. Starting more job-oriented courses in conventional and distance education streams would, perhaps, remain the best bet for the universities to generate more resources. Of course, the other option would be a marginal increase in tuition fees, which has remained unchanged for two decades now.

Printer friendly page  
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Southern States

News: Front Page | National | Southern States | Other States | International | Opinion | Business | Sport | Miscellaneous |
Advts: Classifieds | Employment | Obituary |

Stories in this Section

• Stalin loses Mayorship on quo warranto plea
• Govt. may not agree to Nedumaran mediation
• Water released from Mettur dam
• Power position stable: Minister
• Damage control under way at NLC
• No room for political mileage, say students
• Financial implications of colleges merger move

Copyright © 2002, The Hindu. Republication or redissemination of the contents of this screen are expressly prohibited without the written consent of The Hindu