The Hindu : Anna varsity plans PG programmes to meet teacher shortage

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Thursday, Nov 21, 2002

Southern States

Southern States - Tamil Nadu-Chennai

Anna varsity plans PG programmes to meet teacher shortage

By Our Special Correspondent

CHENNAI Nov. 20. Anna University, which has started a major exercise to revamp the curriculum and syllabi of its courses to make them more industry-oriented, plans to launch two `integrated five-year' programmes in select disciplines, to meet the teacher shortage in its 240 affiliated and constituent colleges.

Explaining the need for the integrated courses, the Vice-Chancellor, E. Balagurusamy, said in an informal chat with reporters that teacher shortage plagued almost all colleges. In many institutions, only B.E.-qualified persons were handling B.E. classes. "We want to create a set of well qualified engineers who can come to the teaching job. There is plenty of opportunity available in colleges in teaching posts, contrary to the situation in industry where manpower needs have reached saturation levels. Students entering B.E./B.Tech courses can be given the option of joining the 10-semester course and come out with an M.E. degree and straightaway enter a teaching post in an engineering college."

In the integrated M.E. programme, the B.E. and M.E. curriculum would be combined in a hybrid fashion so that in 10 semesters of study, the candidate would be offered a M.E. degree with a basic degree in engineering. Similarly, the B.E. and MBA curriculum would be combined for the integrated MBA course.

Both programmes would initially be introduced in the autonomous institutions, the Vice-Chancellor said. He unveiled the proposal at the first meeting of the (reconstituted) academic council held last week. The reconstituted council has 112 members drawn from the academia, industry and management educators.

The Director (Academic Courses), R. Ramprabhu, said colleges in Tamil Nadu alone required thousands of teachers in subjects such as electronics, communication engineering, information technology and computer sciences. The 10-semester integrated PG programme would enable the University to produce the required number of teachers over a period of time. Meanwhile, "we also want to talk to students entering the fourth year, asking them to study two more semesters and leave the University with a PG degree."

As for the syllabus change, Prof. Balagurusamy said that after the conversion of the University into an affiliating type, the Boards of Studies in seven faculties had been reconstituted with experts from affiliated and constituent colleges. Syllabus sub-committees had been formed in the respective faculties with more representation from industries.

These panels would formulate the curriculum and syllabus, keeping in mind the current and projected needs of the industry.

The sub-committees would also simultaneously undertake a major revision exercise of curriculum and syllabus, for implementation in 2004-2005.

Prof. Balagurusamy said the academic council decided to introduce three electives — environmental principles, human values and professional ethics and total quality management — as a core (compulsory) subject in all programmes.

Specific emphasis would be laid on value and ethics education as the University "wants to create a good human being and an engineer with high values." TQM was another area of priority for all types of engineering students, he noted.

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