After an eight month hiatus, higher education institutions in the state opened their doors for final years postgraduate students and researchers on Wednesday. In-person classes will resume for medical colleges and final-year undergraduate students of arts and science,engineering, agriculture, fisheries and veterinary programmes in allcolleges and universities from December 7.

Based on the feedback from stakeholders, and as per the guidelines issued by the University Grants Commission on November 5, colleges and universities can be opened from December 2. After popular feedbackagainst the reopening, especially after the festival season when asecond wave of Covid-19 was anticipated in Tamil Nadu, the government decided to reopen only for a small segment of students on a trial basis.The reopening would apply only for research students and final year students of postgraduate courses in science and for technology courses.

Similarly, college hostels would be opened from December 2 only forthe above students as long as colleges follow the Standard Operating Procedures which would also be issued by the government later. While colleges were held following safety protocols, many students struggled to reach their campuses on time"My bus got cancelled due to the Nivar Cyclone. I have been stuck in Kochi and I was unable to make it to the reopening," said N Sethu, a final year M Phil student from the University of Madras. Another student who lives in the outskirts of Chennai, said that she waited for over an hour for her usual bus to show up and reached her college late. "There have been some timing and frequency changes I was unaware of with respect to buses," said a researcher from the Indian Instituteof Technology of Madras. She added that while the majority of the classes or meetings are held online, researchers need to go to college to only access the labs.