Tamil Nadu arts colleges get 15K more seats, but only 252 additional guest lecturers
CHENNAI: Fulfilling its promise made in this year's budget that 15,000 more seats will be created in government arts and science colleges, the Tamil Nadu government's Higher Education (HE) department issued an order last week to introduce 252 new courses in 100 colleges across TN.
However, the department has asked the Collegiate Education Commissioner (CEC) to engage only temporary guest lecturers (GLs) to cater to the increased number of courses and students. Moreover, it has sanctioned less than 50% of the number of GLs sought by the CEC.
As per the order, the proposal sent by the CEC to the government said that 558 GLs will be required to teach these 252 courses for the first-year students who join these courses in both first and second shifts in colleges.
Consequently, the CEC has sought Rs 13.95 crore for the 2025-26 academic year to pay salaries to these GLs at the rate of Rs 25,000 per month. (GLs are not paid salaries during the two-month vacation period).
However, without explicitly mentioning any reason, the order sanctioned approval for engaging 252 GLs and allotted Rs 6.3 crore for their salaries.
'CEC had asked for money for the total number of staff needed, but the department has allocated lesser funds because they want to manage gap with the available staff. This is unfair and it will affect the quality of teaching also,' said V Thangaraj, president, All Government UGC Qualified Guest Lecturers Association, which has been demanding to increase salary of GLs for long.
Of the 15,354 seats added in total, 2,008 have been added by incremental increase of seats in 173 existing courses in 29 government colleges.
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