A few weeks ago, the Tamil Nadu government’s Higher Education Department went back on its policy that all colleges in the State should adopt a “uniform syllabus”. The new order said that autonomous colleges need not follow a “uniform syllabus” if they did not wish to. This policy was also endorsed by the Tamil Nadu State Council for Higher Education (TANSCHE), the overarching body that formulates programmes, coordinates with universities on the implementation of these programmes, and is empowered to promote cooperation and coordination among institutions to improve higher education and research.
TANSCHE was set up in 1992 and is mandated to comprise 15 members. It is supposed to meet every three months, according to the Act that set up the TANSCHE. However, this has not been followed by the Council. Teachers in universities are angry that even though the Council has not functioned as per the Act, the government has urged them to follow the syllabus that TANSCHE has drafted.
The Council’s website is defunct. The last update to the website was made more than a decade ago and the officials listed on the website have since retired. Ever since TANSCHE was formed, the officials have been political appointees, especially the member-secretary and the vice-chairman, though efforts have been made to ensure that the persons had the calibre to hold the post.
With no website providing details of the members in the Council, university professors are concerned about whether the member-secretary and the vice-chairman have even constituted a Council as mandated by the Act, who its members are, and whether they have attended meetings.
Educators say political issues, which are beyond the purview of the officials of the Higher Education Department, forced the former vice-chancellor of Manonmaniam Sundaranar University to step down from the post of vice-chairman at TANSCHE in 2013-14. It was then that the Council began to slide in its functioning.
However, a government document from 2018 showed that despite dwindling trust, the Council managed to maintain its credibility. It met and discussed key issues such as converting constituent colleges into government institutions, sexual harassment cases in colleges, additional intake of students, and developing higher education schemes.
The excuse that for three years the Council could not function owing to the COVID-19 pandemic is unviable as the policy notes of 2021-22 and 2022-23 offer a detailed view of the work it had undertaken despite the pandemic. The latest 2023-24 policy note, however, has devoted just one page to the activities of the Council. This, when TANSCHE had announced that it proposed to develop the “uniform syllabus” last year. The project mandates that the officials seek consensus from vice-chancellors and senior faculty from the universities under its purview. But professors point out that most teachers engaged to frame the syllabus were from Chennai. They say hardly any information was shared about the faculty invited to participate in the exercise. The opposition to the “uniform syllabus” did not come just from senior faculty but from vice-chancellors of universities as well, an indication that the council members had little understanding of their own roles.
Each year the Council receives an annual grant of ₹25 crore for research by college faculty. Another ₹50,000 is granted to students who show potential for research. But the annual policy document of the department for 2023-24 provides few details of the work done by the council in the past year. According to the document, the Council gave ₹25 lakh to the Directorate of Technical Education to prepare curriculum for polytechnic colleges. The document further states that it conducted a two-day workshop on ‘Recent Trends in Research’.
The absence of a citizen’s charter, given that it is a public body and is being funded from the taxpayer’s money, is further fuelling suspicion that the Council has lost its relevance because of political intervention. It is now incumbent on the government to assuage the concerns of the faculty in higher education institutions in Tamil Nadu by increasing transparency and accountability of TANSCHE.
