Newer specialisations have left educators struggling to evolve an acceptable method and determine if a course conforms to the requirements of a job profile in State government departments.
The State government has drafted rules for recruitment and only candidates who conform to the rules are considered for vacancies in government departments. Until a few years ago the State’s recruiting agency the Tamil Nadu State Public Servuce Commission was assigned the task of ascertaining equivalence of degrees that candidates had been awarded. The task was given to the Tamil Nadu State Council for Higher Education (TANSCHE) in 2019 as the government considered it the appropriate authority to verify qualification credentials of applicants. Since the Council took over it has received around 1,000 petitions from higher educational institutions seeking equivalence approval.
The council constitutes a committee of subject experts who compare the courses offered in a programme and determine if the degree is consistent with the State government’s requirements.
A student is expected to study certain subjects in a degree programme. But a deviation of around 20% in the course work is accepted for the degree.
The Council has found that 43.07% of the degrees do not comply with the State government’s recruitment rules. Till date since taking over the job it has issued 776 orders to 28 higher educational institutions across various states, including the Indira Gandhi National Open University. While 560 orders pertained to equivalence, as many as 422 orders were about degrees that could not be considered equivalent for government recruitment. The council has had to approve equivalence for almost all subjects, at the undergraduate and postgraduate level.
For instance B Com is the most preferred among liberal arts programmes and colleges offer novel courses to attract students. However, when they apply for government jobs, they are denied entry.
A candidate with a B Com degree with either Computer Applications or Entrepreneurship or Corporate Secretaryship or Financial Analytics is considered a B Com graduate, but a B Com degree is not equivalent to BA in Co-operation, B Com in Computer Applications or Information Technology or Professional Accounting as per the government’s recruitment rules.
Educators say the recruitment rules of the State government were framed in the 1970s when only conventional degrees were offered.
“A major overhaul hast to happen with the employment recruitment rules. There are new sub-disciplines in every discipline. For instance there is inorganic chemistry, which has developed as a sub-speciality. These specialisations are not recognised. The TNPSC uses the term ‘eligibility’ whereas the central government uses ‘eligible and desirable’ conditions. Also, over the past 25 years new degrees have come up whereas we have only conventional degrees available with us,” an official explained. TANSCHE says the revision is mandatory as the State is now in the process of conducting eligibility test for recruitment of teachers.
