Fresh lease of life for TANSCHE

By K. Ramachandran

CHENNAI, JUNE 3. A phase of heightened activity seems to be ahead for the Tamil Nadu State Council for Higher Education (TANSCHE), after a spell when it was virtually ignored by the Minister for Education.

After the change of government, the new Minister, Mr. M. Thambi Durai, attended a meeting of TANSCHE, and this is seen as a more than academic exercise.

While, it may sound routine, the Minister's participation in a high-power body meeting signals a break with the past, at least from the academic point of view. For, Ministers participating in such meetings was virtually unheard of in the past few years.

It was the AIADMK Government which constituted the TANSCHE in 1992-93, with the Education Minister as Chairman to provide policy direction to this crucial sector. Senior academicians have held the post of Vice-Chairman of the council which deals with a range of issues, academic and administrative. But the Minister has remained an inactive head of the council. An important body under the TANSCHE is the advisory board of vice-chancellors, which discusses issues from examination reform to suggesting amendments to university laws and statutes in line with the changing times.

Under such circumstances, academicians feel that the Minister's participation in a TANSCHE meeting, that too days after assuming office, could send a positive signal about the Government's involvement in the higher education sector. Importantly, the Education Minister is the Pro- Chancellor of many universities. An aspect concerning university heads, educationists and teacher bodies is the lack of budgetary support for higher education. Mr. Thambi Durai's regular interaction with the vice-chancellors through the TANSCHE, it is felt, can help him understand the constraints under which universities and Government colleges function.

A brain-storming session on finding funds and increasing the block grants to universities and means of deploying such funds can result from the interaction, notes a teacher activist.

At another level, academics have expressed deep concern that the Chancellor-Governor has discontinued the practice of holding regular interaction with all the vice- chancellors. Incumbents of the Raj Bhavan such as Mr. S. L. Khurana and Dr. P. C. Alexander, old timers note, held confabulations, inviting all the vice- chancellors to Chennai. Even the late M. Channa Reddy held two such meetings. After the formation of the TANSCHE, the Governor's interaction with the vice-chancellors and university officials remained confined to meetings at individual level and speaking of specific issues in the universities.

At present, the Chancellor calls the vice-chancellors for a formal discussion on specific aspects like holding convocations, where the Chancellor's presence is required.

A former Vice-Chancellor notes that there was no compulsion on the Chancellor's part to hold regular meetings with the vice- chancellors, and Governors have largely been titular heads of universities. Only when serious issues arose, that too against the functioning of a university or a vice-chancellors, have Chancellors intervened.

However, with the changing perceptions of higher education, and its growing importance in terms of direct impact on national development in the `knowledge era', universities and the TANSCHE would need positive political signals in evolving education strategies.

Instead of recommending changes in means and evolving strategies, the presence of the Education Minister in the TANSCHE could help in deciding highly-political aspects of educational administration: allowing new engineering and professional colleges; increasing intake in professional courses; implementing reservation norms or even overhauling university bodies such as the Syndicate and the Senate, to make them more academic- oriented.

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Section  : Southern States
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