Following problems with recruitment for students of the BA Functional Tamil and BA Functional English courses, the Higher Education Department is now planning to change the courses to BA Tamil and BA English from the next academic year.
They will be submitting papers to change the affiliation to Pondicherry University soon, a senior official from the Department of Higher Education said.
“There are only two colleges that offer this course. Perunthalaivar Kamarajar College of Arts and Science in Kalitheerthankuppam offers BA Functional Tamil and Bharatidasan College offers BA Functional English. For both these courses, there have been some problems with recruitment so we will be applying for the change to BA Tamil and BA English,” he said.
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Both BA English and BA Functional English courses have very similar curriculum, but in many of the recruitment rules, the courses Functional English and Functional Tamil are not mentioned.
As a result, the students who opt for these courses lose out. Unfortunately, departments and companies are often not willing to change their course name.
The University had initially given affiliation only to Kalitheerthankuppam college for the Functional Tamil course. The problem came to light only after the first couple of batches passed out. Now steps would be taken to rectify the situation, he said.
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Earlier, on Monday, 120 students of the BA Functional Tamil Course in the Perunthalaivar Kamarajar Arts College conducted a strike saying that the course should be scrapped because they were not eligible for many of the jobs that were advertised.
Recently, the School Education Department had also advertised for teacher recruitment.
The recruitment rules did not allow students of Functional Tamil to apply. That is why the issue was taken up, one of the students said.
Now, the Education Department is reviewing the recruitment rules and are considering to modify it to include Functional Tamil.