CHENNAI: As announced in this year’s budget, the state has inaugurated 11 new arts and science colleges for 2025-26 and CM MK Stalin said four more colleges will be opened soon. However, no fresh recruitment of staff, particularly teaching faculty, has irked the staff members who are already working in government arts and science colleges across the state.
The higher education department will be spending around Rs 25.27 crore in the first year for running the 11 colleges, each of which will offer five new courses and admit 280 students. Though the department has created 12 teaching posts in each of these colleges for this year, the staff have not been freshly recruited, instead transferred from other colleges on deputation.
Alleging that the 175 government arts and science colleges in Tamil Nadu, including the newly-inaugurated ones, are already facing a staff crunch due to non recruitment in the past 10 years, academicians have urged the government to focus on recruitment instead of running the show by temporary arrangements.
“In the last four years, 35 new arts and science colleges have been opened but not a single new teacher has been appointed. The government has also increased 15,000 seats in the existing colleges this year. There is already a vacancy of around 7,500 permanent faculty members in the existing colleges. Transferring teachers to new colleges will definitely affect the quality of education,” said S Suresh, general secretary of TNGCTA.
Highlighting that the government has reduced the number of sanctioned teaching posts for the newly-established colleges from 17 to 12, K Ganeshan, a retired government college principal, alleged, “If you reduce the number of teachers, then it it is an indication that the new colleges are opened merely to increase gross enrolment ratio (GER) and not to impart quality education.”
However, officials said they have deputed teachers only after a thorough analysis.
“We have not randomly selected and deputed teachers to the new colleges. Only from those colleges and departments which are adequately staffed, we have been pulling staff for the new colleges,” said an official, adding that the new vacancies have been created as per the number of seats and courses that are introduced to ensure no shortage of staff in the new colleges.