Portals sans updates hinder Tamil Nadu students seeking admission info

CHENNAI: As the admission process for students in Arts and Science, Engineering, Polytechnic, and Vocational colleges is at its peak, the Higher Education Department's various wings, including Anna University, have outdated information on their websites, leaving aspirants in the dark.

The Higher Education Department comprises a total of 12 wings, including the Technical Education Directorate, the Directorate of Collegiate Education, state-run Universities, the Tamil Nadu State Council for Higher Education, the Tamil Nadu Archives and Historical Research, the Science City, and the Tamil Nadu Unmanned Aerial Vehicles Corporation. Except for a few departments, most of their official websites lack up-to-date information for students and other stakeholders.

According to the University Grants Commission (UGC) guidelines, all higher education authorities are required to regularly update their websites to comply with new regulations and enhance transparency. Information Technology (IT) experts observe that higher education portals depend on the National Informatics Centre (NIC) for development, and every update of the portal needs a web portal programmer, which every department cannot manage.

For instance, Anna University's portal has the students' placement statistics of 2022-2023, but does not update the details. The placement information is vital for every student dreaming of pursuing engineering courses at Anna University.

Similarly, the Directorate of Collegiate Education, which oversees all Arts and Science colleges across the State, has minimal information on its website. Apart from the home page, details about colleges, scholarship details, the gallery and administrative login, nothing is available on the web page.

Likewise, the Tamil Nadu State Council for Higher Education, tasked with enhancing the curriculum, has not updated the latest degree equivalence report on its website. The portal has an equivalence report only till 2022. The equivalence report helps to determine if a degree from one university or institution is comparable to a similar degree for employment in public services or for pursuing further studies within the state.

Even the Tamil Nadu Archives and Historical Research and Tamil Nadu Unmanned Aerial Vehicles Corporation websites do not have the latest information about their activities.

A senior official from the Higher Education Department, seeking anonymity, said that the decision-making process for updating the portal involves several officers. "In addition, frequent transfers of the officials hit the process," he claimed and refused to provide information on whether any steps were taken to resolve the issue. Quoting the 2025 NITI Aayog report, he stated that State universities receive only a fraction of the financial support from the Centre compared to central universities. "The funding structure for the maintenance of the websites of the State universities should be improved," he said.

K Senthil Kumar, a website developer in the city, said that official portals were usually developed using HTML pages, which could only be updated by dedicated programmers or qualified individuals. "Setting up a common official platform to interconnect all the higher education-related websites could be the only solution. In that case, the portals will be maintained by a group of professionals," he added.

S. Naresh, a career consultant, said that private universities and colleges usually have a large IT team to manage the institution's websites and update the information of universities and colleges regularly. He also expressed concern that outdated websites could negatively impact students, especially those seeking timely information regarding academic matters.