Free laptops lure students to Tamil Nadu

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Chennai has pipped Bengaluru to post, becoming the most-desired destination of higher education for students from Kerala.

It is not the standard of education or the variety of courses on offer that is luring the students but the Tamil Nadu chief minister’s freebies.

After giving away laptops to students who completed graduation this year, J. Jayalalithaa has offered the gadget to UG students and aspirants.

Several Malayali students and parents said laptop was an offer they could not refuse.

Clerical staff at Madras Christian College said the institution had witnessed at least 50 per cent rise in the number of applicants from Kerala. Women’s Christian College, Chennai, staff also confirmed the trend.

As per a Tamil Nadu government order, all plus-2 students studying in government and aided schools, first- and third-year students of arts and science colleges and technical institutions and second- and fourth-year students of government and aided engineering colleges are eligible to receive free laptops.

The free-laptop-distribution scheme is set to be implemented in five years in association with Electronics Corporation of Tamil Nadu Ltd.

The laptop worth Rs 15,000 has an Intel dual-core processor, a clock speed of 2.1 GHz, RAM of 2 GB and 320-GB memory.