DMK president M. Karunanidhi on Wednesday said the merger of five regional Anna Universities into a single affiliating university for engineering colleges all over the State would create administrative burden, besides limiting the scope for research by teachers and causing enormous hardship to students from southern districts.
In a statement here, Mr. Karunanidhi said that the decision of the AIADMK government had gone against the norms of the University Grants Commission (UGC) that around 100 colleges could be affiliated to a university.
“Now a total of 571 colleges will be affiliated to Anna University and it will create administrative burden,” he said.
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Explaining the rationale behind the creation of five regional universities during the DMK regime between 2006 and 2011, Mr. Karunanidhi said more and more technical universities would encourage healthy competition and lead to development in the areas they were situated.
“If there is only one university in Chennai, students from far away places will be under compulsion to visit the city every time they want to make inquiry on marks and research. This will take away time and money of the students and parents,” he said.
Mr. Karunanidhi said the UGC, Department of Science and Technology and many other American and European universities were releasing grants for higher education and research and Tamil Nadu could get more money if there were more universities.
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“The National Knowledge Commission and other Indian Technical Universities have recently come out with a study, stressing the need to create 1,500 universities. So, we should create more universities in Tamil Nadu and should not reduce the existing number,” he said.