Tamilnadu which tops in providing engineering education across the country, would continue to do so. The State government’s vision to start government run engineering colleges in each district has gone well from last year.

With nearly 350 engineering colleges in the State, another five more government colleges would come up in the coming academic year.

Also, some of the private institutions have applied to All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) seeking approval. If things go right, there would be more than one lakh engineering seats available during the counselling this year.

State Higher Education Minister K Ponmudy in the policy note on higher education which was tabled in the Assembly yesterday, said that five new government engineering colleges will be opened at Tiruvannamalai, Thanjavur, Dindigul, Thoothukudi and Kanyakumari districts.
   
The colleges will begin with an intake of 240 students. There would be four streams - Mechanical Engineering, Computer Science and Engineering, Electronics and Communication Engineering (ECE) and Electrical and Electronics Engineering (EEE) with an intake of 60 students each, according to university sources.

The policy note said that the Tamilnadu Open University has planned to introduce 18 new programmes for the period 2009-2010 in order to help students enhance their skills.

The policy note, presented by the Higher Education Minister said the university had launched 14 programmes in the year of its inception 2003-04 itself and enrolled around 14,000 students. With the addition of 68 more programmes since then, the total number this year has risen to 82 and the students strength has crossed 1.7 lakh.

The forthcoming programmes are on various subjects and include sessions in interactive Radio counselling. The university has also chalked out the development of e-content for 50 subjects. Apart from this, virtual Tele-Education facilities will be put to regular use in both synchronous and asynchronous modes, the policy note said.

The Minister also said that the government will introduce shift system in the State-run polytechnic institutions from this academic year. Buoyed by the success of shift system introduced in government arts and science colleges in 2006-07, the system, which enables higher student intake, will introduce shift system in 14 government run polytechnics in the first phase in 2009-10.

In order to encourage girl students hailing from poor families to pursue masters’ degree courses, the parental annual income limit for Periyar EVR Nagammai Free Education Scheme to Women has been enhanced from Rs 24,000 to Rs 50,000, Ponmudy said.

E-content will be developed for 50 more subjects. The CDs containing e-content already developed will be supplied to students for 82 subjects along with printed study material. Virtual tele-education facilities would be put to regular use, he said.

The State had introduced pre-junior typewriting examinations to students who had passed sixth standard to enable them to have practice in typewriting key board for easy operation of computers in future, the Minister said.