The delay in the release of the revised syllabi has put the principals of the non-autonomous affiliated colleges under Anna University in a fix. They say lesson plans, budget allocation and the assignment of faculty for subjects are on hold.
The university would release its new syllabi a year earlier to enable colleges to prepare. It introduced the new regulation in 2021 for the first-year students but not for those of the subsequent years.
The semester exams for the first-year students will end on July 30, and they will start the second year on August 22.
“If the university asks us to upgrade laboratories, there would be trouble. We need to allocate at least ₹25 lakh for mechanical and civil laboratories; to buy licenced software, we need to set aside ₹20 lakh. There is also the issue of availability. We have to call for quotations too,” said the principal of a college in a Chennai suburb.
A principal from Coimbatore said that having the syllabi would help to draft the faculty workload. “We usually buy textbooks for students and reference books for the library. We have put on hold equipment purchase too. The management needs to know the investment required,” he said.
The principals say they need time to prepare the ‘course file’ and the lesson plan and make available the materials.
While the final-year students would be taught under the 2017 regulation, the faculty deployed for the final years may have to be assigned to teach some subjects for second-year students too.
Anna University’s Centre for Academic Courses designs the syllabi and the curriculum. The revision happens every four years; in 2021, a new syllabus was released for the first-year students.
Early this year, Vice-Chancellor R. Velraj launched an exercise to revamp the syllabi following several rounds of meetings with over 100 persons from the industry. Their inputs on their requirement and industry practices would guide the current syllabi revision, it is learnt.
The revision is aimed at improving the admission to the engineering courses and making graduates employable.
A university official said the Boards of Studies were conducting meetings, and within a week or 10 days, the tentative curriculum might be announced. When the Academic Council meets in the second week of August, the university is expected to announce the final syllabi.
The changes are expected to be huge — in subject content and the way the subjects are taught, university faculty members say, adding that the emphasis will be on internship and projects.
