The Hindu Business Line : Accent on higher education

Realising that economic development of a nation mainly depends on the quality of human resources, the Government of Tamil Nadu is fully geared to produce quality human resource, while also ensuring that the poorest of the poor gets access to higher education.

On account of implementing a host of schemes in consultation with Vice-Chancellors, Principals, Representatives of Teachers and Students, Media, Educationists and other stake holders, Tamil Nadu has become a forerunner in the field of higher education at the national level. In order to augment further the Government has proposed to start new engineering colleges at Villupuram, Panrutti, Tindivanam, Nagapattinam and Ramanathapuram from the academic year 2008-2009.

These colleges will be established by Anna University.

The special initiatives taken by the Government have also resulted in the number of students in Arts and Science Colleges increasing to 6.74 lakh in 2007-08 from 5.68 lakh previous year. Similarly in technical education, the number of students in engineering colleges has gone up to 94,127 in 2007-08 from 66,261 in the previous year.

Community colleges

A file photo of anxious students waiting in queue for the Anna University engineering admission application forms.

Community colleges play an important role in providing employment oriented education to persons who were unable to continue school education due to poverty and other reasons and also to get the opportunity of studying under graduate courses. Several Universities in the State have been encouraging NGOs to start community colleges.

Now, more than 10,000 students undergo ‘Learn for Livelihood’ programme offered by Tamil Nadu Open University through community colleges and 85 per cent of them get employment immediately after completing the course.

A view of a village school classroom.

In order to improve the employability of the students, the Universities have started job oriented programmes in specialised areas like shipping and logistics management, hospital administration, counselling and psychotherapy.

However, the issue is that around 70 per cent students in humanities and science subjects remain unemployed for more than three years after completion of their studies.

Job-oriented course

Display of books at The British Council Library in Chennai.

So the Government has therefore formulated a scheme, job oriented add-on course by which the students pursuing courses in arts and science colleges across the State can join a certificate programmes in polytechnics and ITI, which will enhance their employment prospects. From the next academic year the scheme will be introduced in Government arts and science colleges. Based on the experience, this will be extended to aided and self-financing colleges in future.

Though English literacy has been the prime criteria for the multinational companies to set up back end offices, BPOs etc., here, still there is long way to go. In order to help students to improve their communication skills and thereby enhancing their employment opportunities in the job market, the State Government has signed a Memorandum of Understanding with British Council to offer Business English Certificate course (BEC) in arts and science colleges.

Initiatives such as this will further enhance the employability of the students passing out of colleges of different faculties, in the future.

Secondary education

Options aplenty: Representatives of an animation institute offering counselling about courses to students.

To support higher education, the State is concentrating more on improving the secondary education.

The Government feels that providing high quality education to all adolescent girls and boys is the need of the hour.

Based on this objective, it has formulated several schemes to primarily increase availability of secondary school in needy areas, increase enrolments, improve infrastructure facilities in high and higher secondary schools, enhance quality of classroom teaching by improving skills of teachers, develop language fluency and communication skills and impart computer education.

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