Anna University will act against colleges that violate norms for admission to postgraduate programmes, its Vice-Chancellor R. Velraj said.
For sometime now, the university has been receiving complaints about postgraduate students who do not attend college full-time but manage to get full attendance. “When we receive complaints, we withhold their degrees or de-affiliate the institution,” he said.
The complaints were about colleges along the State’s borders with neighbouring Kerala, the V-C said. Such violations where students are admitted but do not attend classes, had been noticed in Kanniyakumari district and in a few places in Coimbatore as well, he added.
“Persons working in Kerala are enrolled as full-time students in postgraduate programmes in colleges in Tamil Nadu. While colleges with good track record refuse to violate norms those that are unable to fill even a handful of undergraduate engineering seats manage to fill all their PG seats,” Mr. Velraj said.
“We wish to caution students who enrol in such programmes that their degree will be declared invalid, and we will suspend affiliation of such colleges. We shall be probing into such complaints, send teams to inspect colleges,” Dr. Velraj said.
According to him a college in a western district had advertised for online theory courses and offline practical courses. “According to AICTE norms only 40% of the theory courses may be taken online. Even for work-integrated courses 60% of the courses must be only through offline mode. We urge candidates not to fall prey to such advertisements and lose their money,” he said.
“It is a matter of concern that such practices are seen in colleges that register single digit admission in undergraduate programmes. Colleges like PSG or even Anna University are having difficulty in admitting students, but colleges with single digit UG admission numbers are admitting many students for PG,” he pointed out.
Alumni portal
Anna University has introduced an alumni connect facility on its portal for the benefit of alumni of College of Engineering, Guindy, Alagappa College of Technology, Madras Institute of Technology and School of Architecture and Planning.