Friday, May 07, 2010
Chennai: Arts and science colleges affiliated to the University of Madras will be monitored to check if academic programmes approved and sanctioned for evening colleges are being conducted during morning time in violation of rules.

“We will send a squad comprising university officials to conduct surprise checks at these institutions to ascertain if they are offering evening college courses during day time. If the colleges violate the rules, we will initiate severe action,” University of Madras vice-chancellor G Thiruvasagam told The Times of India. Several government-aided and self-financing colleges had obtained permission to offer courses in the evening college stream, which means these programmes should be conducted after the day college classes (usually after 2 pm) are over. The evening college scheme was launched to help students who work in the morning to pursue their studies.

In government-aided colleges, the evening college courses are conducted on a self-financing mode. Over the years, there have been complaints that many aided colleges have begun launching more self-financing courses in the evening college to increase their revenue, while in the day college for which government aid was disbursed they continued to offer the old-world courses like BCom , BSc and BA.

In recent years, teachers’ organisations have alleged that many government-aided colleges actually conducted parallel classes for evening college programmes during day time. This is done as students are reluctant to attend classes late in the evening, especially in women’s colleges.

“It is not legal to conduct classes simultaneously for day and evening college programmes. We will gather details about such cases. However, at least some teachers of these colleges should come forward and complain to us about the practice. They can even e-mail their complaints,” vice-chancellor Thiruvasagam said.