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Anna University,Chennai is taking steps to disaffiliate the PMR Institute of Technology, a self-financing engineering college near Maduravoyal.
While the university had received numerous complaints against the institute from students and parents, the decision was taken after the institution produced fake faculty members during a recent university inspection.
On Wednesday, the Syndicate approved the decision to issue a show-cause notice to the college management, asking why they should not disaffiliate the college, said Vice-Chancellor P. Mannar Jawahar. "It is important to maintain quality, especially when it comes to faculty members," he said.
Anna University's inspection teams grade affiliated colleges on the basis of their faculty strength and qualifications (worth 50 per cent) and academic infrastructure (30 per cent for laboratories and 10 per cent for the library). Colleges must score at least 50 per cent to qualify for continued affiliation.
When the affiliating committee first visited the PMR Institute of Technology last year, they gave the college very low marks, and urged the management to make improvements.
A second visit after four months produced no visible improvements, even while the list of faculty members was changed.
On the third visit, the team detected evidence of faculty member impersonation. A mathematics teacher from a school owned by the same management and an engineer working in a software company were posing as faculty members, using false names. "Impersonation in the teaching profession is the highest crime. We cannot tolerate this," Dr. Jawahar said.
He added that students and parents had been sending complaints about the institute to the university, alleging that classes were not held and staff members did not turn up. In fact, the institution has had a long history of such complaints.
In June 2003, PMR students had agitated in the university, protesting the lack of academic and infrastructure facilities and a high fee structure, and asking for a transfer to other institutions. In response, the university had closed the college temporarily and drafted a show cause notice asking why its students should not be distributed to other self-financing colleges.
While nothing came of that move, the university is determined to take action against the institution this time around. "The quality of faculty members is something that must be improved at many institutions, but this kind of impersonation must be dealt with now," said Dr. Jawahar. The university will send the show-cause notice after engineering colleges reopen on Monday.
It is constituting a team for a final formal inspection prior to disaffiliation.
Students from the college will be transferred to other self-financing colleges through the mechanism of a committee set up for this purpose, with representatives from the Syndicate, the State government's Directorate of Technical Education and the All India Council for Technical Education. A similar committee was set up in the wake of the protests in 2003, but this is the first time in the last three years that Anna University has taken steps to disaffiliate a college.
"We want to show that we are taking this seriously," said Dr. Jawahar, warning other colleges to straighten up and improve their faculty
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