Chennai: A well-intentioned academic exercise aimed at achieving excellence in teaching and learning was given a political twist, Raj Bhavan said about the media reports on the vice-chancellors’ conference on Wednesday.
Governor R N Ravi convened the meeting of vice-chancellors of state, central, and private universities in Tamil Nadu on April 25 and 26 at Ooty.
“It is unfortunate that some ill-informed media reports have given this well-intentioned academic exercise, aimed at achieving excellence in teaching, learning, and innovation, a political twist. They wrongly linked it with the recent court judgement and tried to project it as a power struggle between Raj Bhavan and the state govt. These are scandalous and far from the truth,” a press statement by Raj Bhavan said.
The announcement about the conference came two weeks after the Supreme Court’s judgement, which cleared the bills empowering the state govt to appoint vice-chancellors, instead of the governor.
“Preparations for each year’s conference begin several months in advance. Meetings with V-Cs and eminent experts from academia and industries are held to design the structure of the conference, select topics and themes for deliberations, and identify the eminent resource persons across the country who are approached well in advance. This year, too, the preparations for the conference began in January,” Raj Bhavan said.
The statement also mentioned that state universities never interacted with each other and functioned largely in silos, to the disadvantage of students and detrimental to the growth of the institutions.
These annual conferences of leaders of higher educational institutions have been organised since 2022 by the governor.
Even as the Supreme Court empowered the state govt in appointing vice-chancellors to state universities, the governor is still chancellor of state universities.