Chennai: Tamil Nadu govt sanctioned 1,380 crore to Anna University to help it break into the top 150 global university rankings in the next five years. The technical university is currently ranked 465th in the QS world university rankings.“The funds would be used towards 20 components including filling vacancies in assistant professor posts, engaging foreign experts, creating post-doctoral fellowships, creating 500 new online courses, and establishing gallery-type classrooms,” a recent order by higher education secretary P Shankar said.Further, the university will establish an AI platform, AI-integrated virtual labs, a research corpus, a research fellowship programme, student exchange programmes, and an e-library. Of 1,380 crore, the Tamil Nadu govt will give 624 crore, the university will contribute 502 crore, while the contribution from alumni and CSR will be 254 crore.“The roadmap also aims to make Anna University among the top 10 institutions in the country,” higher education secretary Shankar, who is also chairman of the V-C convener committee, said in his address at the university’s 46th convocation held on Wednesday.The state govt constituted a seven-member empowered committee headed by the higher education secretary and an eight-member state-level monitoring committee headed by the chief secretary to review the progress of this initiative twice a year. In his address, Shankar said Anna University entered MoUs with 40 different global universities for academic and research collaborations. “The university placed 1,339 UG and PG students in 256 leading companies, including Amazon, Microsoft, and Caterpillar, with the highest pay package of 55 lakh a year,” he said.Delivering the convocation address, Isro’s former director Mylswamy Annadurai said that due to rapid technological advancements, including artificial intelligence, many jobs are becoming irrelevant or extinct. “According to the World Economic Forum’s future jobs report 2024-25, 17 crore new jobs will be created by 2030, and nine crore existing jobs can disappear, and the nature of several crore jobs will change. So, those who are upskilling themselves will stay employed,” he told the graduating students.Governor R N Ravi gave away degrees and medals to students. As many as 1,50,495 students graduated at the convocation, including 1,21,298 UG students.
