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Now full time IDE director appointed in Madras University
Posted on: 10/Nov/2018 11:01:30 AM
On Friday, 9th November 2018, University of Madras or MU grabbed many eyeballs. The reason is professor K. Ravichandran, controller of examinations (in-charge) was appointed as the director of IDE or Institute of Distance Education. Now IDE has got a full time director after a period of 3 years. Professor K. Ravichandran is an expert in analytical chemistry is known.
It must not be forgotten that professor S. Karunanidhi was holding additional charge as director of IDE for the last 6 months. Vice-chancellor of University of Madras, P. Duraisamy headed a committee and this committee was responsible for selecting this new full time director of IDE. As many as 10 candidates were interviewed by this committee and finally professor Ravichandran was selected as the full time director of IDE. According to the sources, MU had conducted interview to appoint a full time director for IDE after a time of 7 years. It is well known that the admissions in the distant education programmes have been on decline and this appointment of new fulltime director of IDE comes at this critical juncture.
The professors expressed their views regarding the immediate work of the new director of IDE. They spoke about how the new director would be responsible for bringing out the reading materials plus play a vital role in conducting examinations in semester patterns and personal contact programmes etc. The professors were of the opinion that new courses were needed to be identified by the new director. They finally hinted that the market driven courses could stem the decline in the admissions.
There are 2 important posts in MU after vice-chancellor post and register post and they are the posts of director of IDE and controller of examinations or CoE. On Friday evening, the syndicate of MU got together and gave approval to 2 appointments- director of IDE and controller of examinations. It is worthy to mention here that professor of inorganic chemistry, K. Pandian was appointed as the controller of the examinations or CoE. Professor Pandian is an expert in Nanotechnology, surface chemistry and catalyst and polymer science is known.
The shocking piece of information is the enrolment in IDE programmes has come down to 12500 in this year when compared to the last year when the enrolment was 28000.This poor enrolment was due to the delay in starting the admissions in this year after UGC brought forth stringent conditions in the number of teaching staffs in this year. It is brought out that the syndicate also agreed the appointment of 12 teaching staffs in the rank of assistant professors to associate professors for 10 subjects in the Institute of Distance Education. Hence the professors belonging to regular departments who were deployed to IDE would be asked to come back.
