Central university of Karnataka has big plans, but few takers

Karnataka's first central varsity, the Central University of Karnataka, which started operations from last year, has failed to receive an encouraging response from the student community.
 
Located in Gulbarga, it was among the 15 central universities to have received the central government's sanction in the budget last year.

However, most of the seats in the much-touted central university do not seem to have attracted any takers with only 43 students having enrolled in the university thus far. The number of students who would enroll was projected to be around 200 and the intake for the courses had been restricted to 30.
 
Sources attribute the poor response from students to the well-established Central University in Hyderabad, which students largely prefer due to it being already well-known.

According to officials from the department of higher education who requested anonymity, earlier it had been planned to convert Hampi or Gulbarga universities into a central university instead of setting up a new one, but the plan was later changed.

The parliament passed the Central Universities Act in March 2009 under which the university was set up. Though the Karnataka Central University functions out of a rented building at Gulbarga, currently, it is planned to have a permanent campus spread across 621 acres.

Meanwhile, the university will soon have a curriculum of international standards and also teachers from other countries.

The University Grants Commission (UGC) has asked central universities to hire teachers from other countries for a year or two. According to Central University vice-chancellor A M Pathan, the university authorities had visited three universities in Canada, which will provide inputs for design of curricula for courses like MBA, M Com etc. He added that in course of time there would be a faculty exchange programme.
 
Initially, faculty from the Central University would visit universities abroad, which would be followed by having faculty from abroad teach at the university, Pathan said. This would be followed by a student exchange programme, he added.