COIMBATORE: The Tamil Nadu government’s announcement to offer professional courses in Tamil medium seems to have evoked a good response among the students with nearly 10,000 of them opting for agriculture courses in Tamil, despite only 120 seats being available. The Tamil Nadu Agricultural University (TNAU) has introduced two courses — B.Sc Agriculture and B.Sc Horticulture — in Tamil medium starting this academic year at its Coimbatore campus.
“This indicates that students are interested to learn agriculture in their mother tongue. Due to this, we expect these seats to get filled in the beginning of the counselling itself,” said M Kalyansundaram, Dean (Agriculture) at TNAU. The rank list will be released on November 2, after which the dates will be announced for the first phase of counselling.
As many as 47,600 applications were received online for admissions to 11 undergraduate courses offered in 14 constituent and 28 affiliated colleges for the current academic year, Kalyansundaram said. “However, the number of applications has come down by 1,500 compared to the previous year,” the dean added.
Students might have opted for Tamil medium courses as they have a similar background in government and aided schools, said N Kumar, Vice-Chancellor of TNAU. “It may be their language of comfort,” he added.
Teaching in mother tongue make students think creatively, says professor
TNIE also spoke to one of the students who applied for a Tamil medium course at the university. “I scored 509 out of 600 in class 12. Despite knowing English moderately, I have applied for B.Sc Agriculture in Tamil to understand the subjects in my mother tongue. Besides, the government gives 20 per cent reservation in jobs for Tamil medium students,” said M Yasodha from Salem.
“If we teach in our mother tongue at schools and colleges, students would think creatively and will involve in innovation in the future. It’s scientifically proven,” observed M Mathialagan, head of the Tamil department at Udumalpet Government Arts College. Meanwhile, former Vice-Chancellor of TNAU, K Ramasamy said, “The institutions should teach an additional language based on job opportunities. For instance, there are agriculture job opportunities in South America, Malaysia, Singapore, etc. So, TNAU should teach languages such as Spanish or Arabic, too. We should understand that students select the course for job opportunities. So, the institutions have to train them well for that.”
‘Should train them well’
K Ramasamy, former V-C says the institutions should understand that students select the course for job opportunities, and so, have to train them well for the same