52 Calicut University and R E C Calicut

Till 1968, there was only one university in Kerala. All colleges, Arts & Science, Engineering, Medicine, Pharmacy, Dental, Ayurvedic all colleges were under this university. Calicut  University was the second one started functioning when E.M.S.Namboodiripad wasthe  Chief Minister under the special efforts of the Education  Minister  Jb.C.H.Mohammed Koya. Prof.K.C.Chacko, who was the Director of Technical Education was appointed as Special Officer and later the Pro-Vice Chancellor. Later Dr.M.M.Ghani, an eminent  academician, was appointed as the first Vice Chancellor of Calicut University. Thenhipalam where the Calicut University had its campus became part of the newly formed Malappuram district in June, 1969.

1968  was also the  year in which I passed  my engineering course. We had a five year integrated course  for engineering after  SSLC and one year of Pre-University. But later in 1970, the duration of the engineering degree course was reduced to 4 years. One year  Pre-University course was replaced by 2 year Pre-degree course. Still later  4 year  course was converted to an 8 semester  course .

At that time, only three engineering colleges were affiliated to Calicut University, Government Engineering College(GCE) Thrissur, N.S.S.College of Engineering(NSSCE) Palakkad and R E C.  Among these, curriculum planning and preparation of engineering curriculum was mostly done by   members of faculty from R E C. The reasons for this are : (1)members of faculty in GCE  was  often being transferred to other  government colleges and many of them were not taking up this work and (2) many of the  teachers in  NSSCE at that time were  not highly qualified  like  those in  REC. Therefore, even if others did not like it, most of the planning work for examinations too were done by the senior faculty in REC Calicut.  For the university, conduct of engineering examination was real headache with 52 courses for the 4 year degree course with less than 1000 students in each branch. For other degree courses, the number of papers were much less with large number of students. Getting examiners to set the question papers, getting these printed etc was real tedious for the examination wing. Moreover, the  Senate and Syndicate  had  very few members from the professional colleges.

The  major problem at that time was that the engineering  examinations were not conducted in time. Often 4 year course was  completed in 4 ½  years. Even after examination dates were announced, students  from GCE or NSSCE  used to come in hired  contract buses and pressurised the Controller of Examinations with gherao  to post pone the examinations on some flimsy ground that there was  some strike in their college or there was no water in the hostel etc. As there was no strike or political interferences resulting in loss of classes in REC, we were ready for the examinations. Most of the students from other states wanted to complete the course in time and get some employment in their home states at the earliest. They could go home only once in a semester after the examinations and this also could not be done if the examinations were postponed indefinitely. Many students who got jobs through campus placement was likely to loose their jobs if they do not complete the course in time.

Most of the students in GCE and NSSCE were from Kerala. Both had student unions elected with support from students’ organizations sponsored by political parties.  Strikes and other disturbances were common in both colleges and very rarely sufficient number of working days could be completed  by the time  our students  completed the semesters. When this type of postponement of examinations became a regular phenomenon, we   started the next semester straightaway without conducting the examinations. When finally the dates for examinations were announced, the higher semester class will be suspended and the classes resumed after the previous semester examinations. This way we could   manage to complete the course without inordinate delay. In spite of these efforts, a few batches took more than 4 ½ years to complete the course. Of course, this type of bull dozing by REC was not liked by the students and staff members of these colleges. But they had to keep quite as there were a few court cases asking the university to conduct the examinations  in time or be prepared  to compensate the students financially for the loss of their campus placement jobs etc.

REC faculty was  taking the lead  in the revision of syllabus  too. Any syllabus revision should try to incorporate new trends in different   branches of engineering and the curriculum and syllabus revision was with this in view. However, some staff members ridiculed this telling that the syllabus is copied from M.I.T and Stanford and cannot be taught by their teachers. They were creating obstacles  in the revision  of the syllabus even after  it was approved by Board of Studies by  lobbying in the Academic Council. Even the list of experiments   to be conducted in the laboratory had to be diluted to the minimum facility available  in any of the three colleges. As the external examiners for the conduct of practical examinations had to come from the other two colleges, we had no other option than to keep it like that. Many experiments that can be conducted using modern equipment REC could purchase out of the liberal grant from the government of India could not be included in the list. There was a possibility that some of these may get damaged because of non-use. Even the conditions for the promotion to higher semesters were diluted to the extent that many students  were allowed to complete the  four year course with  twenty or more  back papers.

Under  these circumstances, REC  Calicut wanted to get academic autonomy. However, the Kerala or Calicut university act did not define a category of colleges called autonomous and we could not get this done until the formation of NIT in 2002 by an act of parliament.  Until then, we were struggling  with inadequacies  in other colleges under the university.