For the third consecutive academic year, Kannada medium engineering courses have found no takers with all 90 seats in three colleges going vacant. Lack of incentive to study engineering in Kannada is to be blamed for this, experts say.
The Karnataka Examination Authority (KEA) has completed the admission process for undergraduate engineering courses for 2022-23 academic year recently and as per the data available, there were no takers for Kannada medium
engineering.
According to Visvesvaraya Technological University (VTU), there were 30 candidates who opted for Kannada medium engineering seats during option entry and they were allotted seats too. But, none of them reported to the colleges. Similar was the situation in 2021-22 and 2020-21 academic years.
During 2021-22, 10 students opted seats, but none of them got admissions. Even in 2020-21 academic year, 17 students opted seats, but did not report to the colleges.
The Higher Education department decided to offer engineering education in Kannada medium from 2020-21 academic year, and three colleges - S J C Institute of Technology (Chikkaballapura), Maharaja Institute of Technology (Mysuru) and Bheemanna Khandre Institute Of Technology (Bidar) - offer engineering courses in Kannada medium, in the civil and mechanical streams.
Following the recommendation by the National Education Policy (NEP) to give priority to regional language in higher education, the government decided to offer engineering education in Kannada, thinking that it would rescue students from the Kannada medium background.
“Unless we give reservation in jobs, this initiative will not be fruitful,” VTU Vice-Chancellor S Vidyashankar said, adding that he would write to the government. VTU officials said that even the translation of syllabus to Kannada medium for the second year course is almost done.
It can be recalled that the Kannada Development Authority (KDA) had advised the state government and the private firms to provide job reservations for Kannada medium students to encourage them to take up the course.