Government of India founded the Central University of Tamil Nadu, along with eight other Central Universities, through an Act of Parliament in 2009. It is part of the greater role that the Central Government assumed in making higher education accessible to aspirants from the weaker sections of the society. With eight students in M.A. English Studies, the university started functioning from November 2009, at the Collectorate Annexe at Thiruvarur, 60 kilometers to the east of Thanjavur.
The University offers Integrated M.Sc., postgraduate and doctoral programmes. The departments of Mathematics, Physics, and Chemistry offer I,M.Sc. programmes. Postgraduate programmes are available in the departments of English Studies, Tamil, Media and Communication, Social Work. At the moment, Economics and Social Work programmes are run in collaboration with mentoring institutions, namely, Madras School of Economics and Tata Institute of Fundamental Sciences. Most of the departments have commenced doctoral programmes too. The Community College of the University offers Water Management, Para Legal Course. For these the University has signed M.O.Us with the Tamil Nadu Agriculture University, Coimbatore, and National Law School University of India, Bengaluru.
Library: The University Library was established in the year 2009 and it serves the students, faculty members and staff of the university. The library has a collection of about 22,600 books. Of these, more than 1,500 books are reference books (Handbooks, Dictionaries, Encyclopaedias, and coloured atlases, etc) and the rest are Textbooks and General books. Besides these, the library also has 114 CDs/DVDs and subscribes to 19 print journals.
Coaching Centre:Central University of Tamilnadu invites application from students belonging to SC/ST/OBC (non-creamy layer), minority communities and physically challenged/economically weaker section for attending the free coaching classes for Central/State public services and Bank recruitment Exams. The coaching will focussed on any one particular competitive exam which will be decided based on the applications received.
Hostel Facility
In the permanent campus, 200 Nos. each of Boys and Girls hostel have been completed and students have started occupying the new hostels at main campus. A 500 seater mess block was committed to the university recently.