The Chennai-based Anna University (estb.1978) — Tamil Nadu’s showpiece engineering and technology varsity — is suffering a deep identity crisis. Originally established as a unitary university, it was transformed into an affiliating varsity in 2002 with 240 engineering colleges in the state affiliated with it. In 2006 it was once again converted into a unitary university by the ruling DMK government to allow its faculty to concentrate on research and development.
To administer the state’s engineering colleges, the state government decreed four dispersed Anna Universities of Technology (AUT) in Tiruchi, Coim-batore and Tirunelveli in the year 2007 and Madurai in 2010, investing all of them with degree awarding powers. To seal the deal, the state government passed the Anna University, Chennai (Amendment) Bill 2010, converting Anna University back into a unitary varsity with four constituent colleges, and simultaneously decreed another Anna University of Technology (AUT) Chennai, which now has over 130 engineering colleges in the city and environs affiliated with it.
As a result, currently there are six universities sporting the appellation ‘Anna’ in the state, with the five AUTs adminis-tering over 500 engineering colleges affiliated with them. And four of the five AUTs are suffering teething pains — AUT, Coimbatore has been functioning from rented premises for the past three years; AUT, Tirunelveli is functioning from within the cramped campus of the Government College of Engineering, Tirunelveli; AUT, Madurai is also located in temporary premises and AUT, Chennai is housed in the Central Polytechnic campus in Tharamani. Only AUT, Tiruchi has been functioning smoothly since its inception in February 2007 on its own 356-acre campus. Unsurprisingly, fears are being voiced that Anna University’s brand name and value built up over 32 years — and respected countrywide — is suffering erosion.
Although the state government has made land grants to all five AUTs, construction has yet to begin in right earnest and the general consensus is that it will take some years before they become operational and establish their own brand identities. All this tinkering, chopping and changing to no obvious purpose, except perhaps to create vice chancellors’ jobs for DMK party loyalists, has dismayed the academic community in Chennai.
“The five AUTs have been enacted by the state legislative assembly with the All India Council of Technical Education having swiftly given its approval, overlooking the fact that they don’t meet required infrastructure and faculty norms. These structural changes have been made without any vision or planning. Moreover, the new univer-sities have been given permission to use the high profile Anna University brand name to serve their own purposes,” says the dean of a reputed university in Tamil Nadu speaking on condition of anonymity.
But although there are misgivings about the haphazard manner in which the AUTs have been hived off from Anna University and left to fend for themselves, causing considerable inconv-enience to thousands of undergraduate students who will now receive AUT rather than Anna University degrees, some monitors of Tamil Nadu’s educa-tion scene are convinced that converting Anna University, Chennai into a unitary university is a good decision. ‘Since 2002, Anna University, Chennai, has been overburdened with issues related to the administration of affiliated colleges, leaving the faculty little time to pursue research. The concept of an affiliating university is outmoded and Anna University’s research output which has declined over the years will improve. Simultaneously the idea of decentr-alising the affiliation function to several AUTs will improve standards in affiliated colleges in the long run,” says V.C. Kulandaiswamy, former vice chancellor of Anna University, Chennai.
Although there’s an emerging consensus that in the long run the creation of smaller varsities will improve academic standards in Tamil Nadu’s highly politicised universities, acade-mics in Chennai are keeping their fingers crossed that the Jayalalithaa-led AIADMK, which is expected to win the legislative assembly election scheduled for this month (April), accepts this logic. Or Anna University’s identity crisis will become deeper.
Hemalatha Raghupathi (Chennai)