MADURAI: The Joint Action Council of College Teachers of Tamil Nadu (JAC) has welcomed the Centre’s decision to withdraw the deemed university status of 44 private educational institutions, which did not meet the required standards.

In a statement here on Thursday, S. Vivekanandan, JAC convener, said that teachers’ organisations had been constantly opposing the conferment of deemed university status on private institutions and demanding that regulatory powers be vested with public-funded universities and not with private educational institutions.

“It is shocking to note that some of the deemed universities scored zero on the grading system adopted by the Prof. P.N. Tandon Committee, which was constituted to review the functioning of deemed universities,” Mr. Vivekanandan said. Opposing the recommendations of the Tandon Committee to give a three-year period for rectifying the shortcomings in some deemed universities, the JAC said, “This recommendation will seriously jeopardise the right to quality education of the stakeholders of higher education.”

It demanded that the State government drop the initiative to convert some colleges into universities since the move “will negate social justice in higher education.”

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