University with ‘Potential for excellence’!
The Madurai Kamraj University has been accorded a status called ‘University with potential for excellence’ by UGC (University Grants Commission).
More than a decade ago, their MicroBiology department achieved international acclaim. Now the university as whole got this status. University authorities naturally feel proud and put this tag prominently on all their communications. They even went on to put them on the sides of their buses.
As a result, many mistook that ‘tag’ as a slogan incorporated by the University. May be it is a prestigious tag, but if you take the sentence at face value, it implies that ‘this university got potential, BUT it has NOT achieved excellence yet’. Not a good comment for a 40 year old institution. 40 years is more than a career life-time for men. If that is not sufficient, how long it will take to achieve ‘excellence’?
25 years back there was a tiny planetarium existed in Madurai. It was housed inside a room of Science Education Centre (SEC) at MK University building near Outpost. The dome was nothing but a round, white parachute stretched by strings attached to the walls on all sides. It obviously looked old, perhaps used in the days of WWII. (Parachutes were only round and white in those days). The rim of the parachute had cut-outs of the skyline of Madurai.