PSG College of Technology, a premier institute for technological training, is hailed to be one of the best examples of ‘industry-institution interaction’ in the country today. An autonomous, government-aided institution, PSG Tech is considered to be one of the few ‘teaching companies’ in the world.
On January 25, 1926, PSG and Sons Charities Trust was registered and PSG Rangaswamy Naidu assumed office as the managing trustee. Twenty-five years later, on August 26, 1951, PSG was inaugurated with GR Damodaran, one of the grandsons’ of PS Govindasamy Naidu, as the college’s first principal.
PSG Tech has come a long way since. R Nandagopal, director, PSG Institutions, adds, “One of the primary reasons why PSG College of Technology ranks where it is today is because we have the cream of students and teachers, who have added value to the institutions over the years. Though we are a government-aided institution, we have our value-systems in place and lay great importance on students bringing out their creativity. We also have five-year sandwich programmes for engineering students where they are
exposed to industrial visits and classrooms simultaneously.”
The emphasis is on vocational education and production-oriented industrial training. The college now has a student strength of nearly 7,000 and offers various courses. One unique feature of PSG College is the close collaboration between the educational institution and industry, resulting in the cross fertilisation of theory with practice. The students also have good hostel facilities.
The college has produced some of the best-known faces in the fields of technology and entrepreneurship. Mylswamy Annadurai, project director of Chandrayaan-1 and Chandrayaan-2, graduated from here in 1982. Shiv Nadar, chairman and CSO of HCL Technologies and Congress MLA Radhakrishnan are some of the prominent people who have made the college proud.
“We have built the alumni network in the past few years. They mentor the current batches and also offer them industrial exposure if they are
entrepreneurs. We have an alumni meeting on August 15 every year for the students who graduated 25 years ago,” explains L Gopalakrishnan, managing trustee, PSG Institutions.
The college is also aspiring for the status of unitary university. “The bill was proposed in 2008. However, it was stalled due to assembly elections. We now hope it could be brought up again so that we can offer many more facilities than what we are doing now,” says Nandagopal.
— rajeshwariyer@gmail.com