MADURAI
The Madurai Kamaraj University (MKU) College here has not conducted its graduation ceremony for the students who passed out of the college at least since 2015.
The college, which comes under the direct administration of MKU and being run on self-financing mode, offers 13 undergraduate courses and nine postgraduate courses with hundreds of students passing out every academic year.
While a section of alumni who completed their undergraduation as early as 2013 claimed that they were yet to receive their degrees, official sources confirmed that the graduation ceremony was not conducted only for the batches that passed out since 2015.
A girl student, who completed her undergraduation and postgraduation in business administration in the college and passed out in 2017 said that she neither got the opportunity to attend the graduation ceremony nor received her degree certificates yet.
Another postgraduate student, who passed out in 2016, said that this was despite the college promptly collecting a ‘Convocation fee’ from final year students. “Though I desperately needed the certificate for a job in late 2017, I could not obtain it. I received it only recently,” he said.
Highlighting that the college was run on self-financing mode with fee on a par with many privately-run colleges, a post-graduate student in Tamil who passed out in 2017, said that it was unfair on the part of the college to not issue certificates on time and conduct graduation ceremonies.
“Majority of our students comes from rural and economically-backward families. It will be a dream for them and particularly their parents to see them receive degrees at the graduation ceremony,” he said.
Acknowledging that there were delays in the issuance of certificates due to various factors, a senior official from the university said that the issues had already been addressed to a large extent.
“Now, we have obtained all the backlog certificates of students graduated since 2015 and made it available at the college for them to come and collect immediately. It was a humongous task. However, we have done it,” he said.
Assuring that graduation ceremony will be conducted for those passed out in 2018 in the near future, the official said that the possibility of doing it together for those graduated since 2015 will also be explored.
