Single in the class in 5 TN colleges

COIMBATORE: Single-teacher schools and colleges with fewer and unqualified teachers are a common feature in rural Tamil Nadu. But, how about single student classrooms?As many as five self-financing engineering colleges affiliated to the Anna University of Technology (AUT, Chennai) had actually managed to attract just a lone student in one undergraduate engineering branch (classroom) each during the admission season 2010-11. Another four institutions were able to admit only two students in one classroom each.Since the syllabus is the same for all engineering branches in the first year, these ‘single’ students did not feel the loneliness as they got to attend classes with students of other branches. However, now as they are set to move into the second year, the prospect of a teacher lecturing a lone student or two pupils looms large.While the AUT Chennai authorities are themselves taken by surprise over this development, the reality only gets even more striking since of the 165 colleges affiliated to it, 13 of them admitted 10 or less students in 19 classrooms among them.These statistics emerged when the university recently instructed its affiliated institutions to give details of its faculty, students and infrastructure. However, colleges are hopeful that they would weather the student crisis.V Ramanathan, principal of the ACT College of Engineering and Technology inMaduranthagam, says: “Last year we received the approval to start the BE Civil Engineering branch after the single window counselling was over. So we got just one student. We hope that we will get more students in the second year under the lateral entry scheme as per which we can fill up the 59 lapsed seats as well as 10 per cent lateral entry seats in civil engineering.”Interestingly, statistics reveal that even in the second year, 32 classrooms in 25 engineering colleges have 10 or lesser number of students. T S Sivakumaran from A R Engineering College in Villupuram, where only six students are in the second year of B Tech Information Technology branch, said, “Our management is ready to hold classes for these students with the hope that, we will get students in the coming years. Recession in the IT sector during 2009-10 could be the reason for a dip in admissions.”