In a significant administrative restructuring, seven new deputy directors have been appointed to the Distance Education Centre of Madurai Kamaraj University by the Vice-Chancellor P.P. Chellathurai at a review meeting here on Monday.
Speaking to the media, Mr. Chellathurai said that the move was to improve efficiency in the administration. He said that each of the seven deputy directors, who had been chosen from among the faculty members in Distance Education Centres, would be overseeing different stream of activities, which included Lessons, Seminars, Grievances, Electronic Data Processing (EDP), Publicity, Finance and Accounts, and Exams and Results.
They will be reporting to V. Kalaiselvan, Director of Distance Education (in-charge). “The present set up places too much burden on Director of Distance Education, who has to handle all these responsibilities. The structure that I have introduced now was in existence many years ago with four deputy directors. Now, I have expanded it to seven to meet the present needs,” he said.
Highlighting that the deputy directors would be handling the role as an additional responsibility without any remuneration, Mr. Chellathurai said that the restructuring was part of his plan to turnaround the problems plaguing the Distance Education Centre.
“The enrolment has come down from more than a lakh students to just 40,000 students now. Similarly, the annual revenue has come down from ₹100 crore many years ago to just ₹28 crore. There is also the issue of pending revenue of around ₹ 16 crore, for which steps have already been initiated to recover the dues from the study centres,” he said.
To a question on the government’s decision to close down study centres of all the State universities functioning outside Tamil Nadu to comply with the norms of University Grants Commission, he said that MKU would not be closing them immediately since it had obtained a stay regarding the same from Madras High Court.
