After Prime Minister Narendra Modi launched engineering courses in five different languages including Tamil, Telugu, Hindi, Marathi and Bengali, five engineering colleges in Karnataka have decided to launch engineering courses in Kannada. According to Dr Karisiddappa, Vice-Chancellor of Visveswaraya Technological University (VTU), these courses will be launched in Kannada from the academic year 2022-23. He says, "Currently, five colleges have decided to implement these courses. Another 25 colleges have also shown an interest in implementing it across Karnataka but the principals of these 25 engineering colleges are still in talks with their respective college trustees and managements."
These five colleges includes Cambridge Institute of Technology, Bengaluru, SJC Institute of Technology, Chikkaballapura, Coorg Institute of Technology Ponnampet, Tontadaraya College of Engineering, Gadag and BLDE college of Engineering, Vijayapura. Karisiddappa further said, "Colleges who have got NBA accreditation for their particular engineering course can launch that particular course or any one course in Kannada. Currently, it is better to launch Civil Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, Computer Science and Electronics and Communication courses in Kannada. Because there are state government jobs available for people who pursue these courses. Therefore, I am going to request the state government to reserve 20 per cent of government jobs for Kannada-medium students."
When we asked if there will be enough takers for these courses in Kannada, he said, "A lot of students after completing their Class 10, study PU 1 and PU II in English medium. Though they know the meaning or how a particular concept works, they struggle to express themselves in English. But once we implement these courses in Kannada, I am sure there will be a lot of takers for this. Currently, each college can take 30 to 60 students and use the existing facilities in their colleges. We have also requested the state government to launch these courses in government engineering colleges too because a lot of these government colleges are in rural areas and it will be easy for the students to study while staying in their villages."
Currently, VTU is transforming the content from English to Kannada and also working to include quality reference materials for students who will study engineering in Kannada language. "Initially, there might lesser students as the message of course availability in Kannada has to reach many students. But I am sure the number of students will steadily increase," concludes Karisiddappa.
