Hundreds of students of the University of Madras who graduated in 2016 stand to lose hard-earned admission in foreign universities due to the inordinate delay in appointing a Vice-Chancellor.
Every year, students from some of the well-known autonomous colleges affiliated to the 160-year-old university are admitted to foreign colleges, which require the students to produce their degree certificates to confirm admission.
Recently a student of visual communication from a self-financing college approached M. Srinivasan, in-charge Controller of Examination at the university, for her degree certificate. The student had passed with a distinction in 2016 and had been admitted to a UK university. Though the official provided her a letter explaining the university’s inability to give her degree certificate, the UK University has kept her admission in abeyance.
Autonomous institutions such as Loyola College and Madras Christian College said at least 100 students go abroad for higher education every year from each of their colleges. Authorities in both these colleges said they helped the students by providing bona fide certificates.
The Dean of Student Affairs, David Prabhakar of MCC, said since the college holds its graduation day only in February or March, they had not yet heard from their students. “If the delay continues into April or May, we will start hearing from students. Generally colleges accept provisional certificates that we can provide and institutions also accommodate a delay of a few months,” he said.
Mr. Srinivasan said only one student had approached him in the month since he took over as CoE.
Normally, the university holds its convocation in November/December. The degree certificates, signed by the V-C, are released to all colleges, which then hold their respective graduation day. Convocation had been delayed by several months in 2013, after R. Thandavan took over as Vice-Chancellor as he waited for the then Chief Minister to give him an appropriate date.
Mr. Thandavan’s tenure ended on January 17, 2016. The Controller of Examination’s tenure ended on January 29, and the Registrar’s term ended last week. Currently, the university has no Vice-Chancellor, an in-charge registrar, and in-charge CoE.
In December, the then registrar P. David Jawahar and CoE S. Thirumagan had considered asking the three-member convener committee to sign the certificate. But a section of the Syndicate objected to it as none of the members was an academic. The committee is headed by the Higher Education Secretary and the other two-members are the director of college education and a school principal.
Matters have not been helped as the Vice-Chancellor search committee is yet to come up with a panel of three probable names for the Vice-Chancellor post, which would be handed over to the Governor-Chancellor. He would then select one of them for the job.
