The State government will absorb the expenses for education in professional courses of students admitted under the 7.5% reservation for government school students, Chief Minister M. K. Stalin has announced.
At a function organised in Anna University on Monday to distribute allotment letters to a few candidates who had been admitted to various programmes under the 7.5% reservation for government school students, Mr. Stalin said the fees for counselling, tuition and hostel, would be paid by the government itself. This applies to students admitted to all professional courses under the quota.
The Chief Minister urged the students to make the best use of the opportunity and equip themselves with skills so that they get placed well after graduation or become entrepreneurs.
The government’s decision is expected to benefit around 10,000 students who will be admitted to engineering programmes, in addition to around 350 students who will be admitted to other professional courses such as agriculture, fishery and law in the current year.
Mr. Stalin said the current government should be known as the golden era of higher education in technical education just as Kamaraj’s rule was hailed as the era for school education and Kalaignar’s regime was known to promote and strengthen collegiate education.
“It would give me the greatest happiness if in a few years a person meets me in some remote village and says, ‘It is because of the Government Order you issued that I got educated and am placed in a big company or that I have established a company’,” Mr. Stalin said. He urged the students to make the best use of the opportunity they have been given to educate themselves and also uplift their families and their villages.
He distributed allotment orders to a few government school students later.
Senior officials of higher education department, School Education Minister Anbil Poyyamozhi, Higher Education Minister K. Ponmudi, Health Minister Ma. Subramanian, MP Thamizhachi Thangapandian, besides senior bureaucrats, were present.
