University to offer skill-based electives

IRUCHI: Bharathidasan University has committed the support of the Institute for Entrepreneurship and Career Development (IECD) to affiliated colleges to offer six papers on skill-based electives as an essential part of the undergraduate curriculum, from the third semester onwards.

Colleges could choose from the over 40 programmes for which the IECD has structured the curriculum and encourage students to identify areas that suit their aptitude. Students have to be told at the very outset that all the six elective papers would be designed for their sequential progress in a particular skill.

As advocated by the Tamil Nadu State Council for Higher Education, Arts and Science Colleges that do not have the facilities to offer skill-based electives can take the help of nearby polytechnic colleges to offer technical-oriented programmes. The advantage in this case is the students can also exercise the option of obtaining an additional polytechnic degree by appearing for additional papers apart from their electives.

Likewise, students opting for the IECD programmes either at the main centre or the nodal centres will receive additional certificates of the Institute for having undergone the programme as part of their UG curriculum.

Students will be provided the flexibility of pursuing their electives during week-ends or vacations, the Vice-Chancellor M. Ponnavaikko told a gathering of college Principals on Tuesday.

The Vice-Chancellor’s insistence that the colleges should not levy any additional fee for offering the skill-based electives evoked observations from a section of the principals that the appreciable intention behind the initiative to make the students employable apart, the ground realities were not conducive. The Principals of Government Colleges, in particular, felt that they would be in a piquant situation. To this, the Vice-Chancellor replied that the State Government, which had mooted the skill-oriented programmes as part of the curriculum in all Arts and Science universities, was bound to support them financially. As regards Government-aided colleges, which also collect only the Government-specified fees for the degree programmes, he said the extent of nominal fee that could be levied for offering the electives would be arrived upon.

The IECD would offer guidance training to teachers for those programmes for which the college had facilities. The colleges could draw on the expertise of teachers in neighbouring engineering colleges for offering electives in technical areas, he said, adding that the efficiency of the principals will determine the success of the initiative.