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| Friday, October 12, 2007
Two Chennai colleges to become varsities
Both will receive substantial grants from State Government for
augmenting infrastructure
Chennai: Two grand old institutions of higher education in the
State will soon be accorded a honour that has been more than
a century in the making. Queen Mary’s College and Presidency
College will become universities.
They will be the first among many colleges in Tamil Nadu that will be elevated as universities.
Higher Education Minister K Ponmudy said on Thursday that it
was estimated that the country would need around 1,500 universities
to meet the challenge of improving the quality of higher education.
More colleges would be made into universities soon.
He was addressing a function to lay the foundation stone for
the Dr. Kalaignar Block at Queen Mary’s College. Both
colleges will also receive substantial grants from the State
Government for augmenting infrastructure and setting up additional
facilities.
“The Queen Mary’s College alone will need 87 new
classrooms, which will be constructed at a cost of Rs.2.5 crore.
An additional Rs.50 lakh will be allotted for the repair of
old buildings on the campus,” Local Administration Minister
M.K. Stalin, who laid the foundation, said.
The elevation is in continuance of the grant of autonomy to
both institutions. For Queen Mary’s College, especially,
the promise of better infrastructure comes as a welcome relief
as the nearly 90-year-old institution is housed in buildings
badly in need of repair.
More importantly, the new classrooms will come up at the site
where the Capper House once stood.
Heritage building
It was the heritage status of this building, which was built
in 1800 and housed the first women’s college of the then
Madras Presidency, that became the bone of contention when the
AIADMK Government decided to demolish the QMC buildings to make
way for a new Secretariat in 2003.
The Dr. Kalaignar Block will be in sync with the heritage architecture
of other buildings on the campus, according to officials of
the Higher Education Department. To be completed in a year,
it will be a two-storey structure with a library, administrative
offices, a conference hall and classrooms.
Women empowerment
The State Government is committed to the empowerment of women,
Mr. Stalin said. The number of women representatives in local
bodies had exceeded the 33 per cent mandated by the State government.
Out of the 13,751 panchayat leaders, for example, 5,427 were
women (nearly 40 per cent).
Higher Education Secretary K. Ganesan, Director of Collegiate
Education Nalini Ravindran and college principal Eugene Pinto
were present.
Courtesy: The Hindu
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