Leading by example

These two cities boast of the prestigious, National Law School and the Indian Institute of Management  (IIM). Universities here offer specialised courses in subjects as different from each other as agriculture, fisheries, gender studies, Sanskrit and Kannada languageand literature.
 

Bangalore got its first medical school in 1917 and first medical college in 1929. In the 1930s the medical college was shifted to Mysore, while the school continued to function in Bangalore till 1956. In 1953 the Kasturba Medical College came up in Manipal and in 1956 the Karnataka Medical College was set up in Hubli. The first government dental college was started in 1958 in Bangalore and the first private dental college was started in Manipal in 1965. By 1980s the state had 12 medical colleges out of which four were started by the government.
 

Post 1980s saw a spurt in number of dental colleges in the state. Today, there are 43 dental colleges in Karnataka that take 2,950 students each year as against all India intake of 22,740 students. 
 

In 1953 Dr Tonse Madhaya Anantha Pai founded Kasturba Medical College, the first private medical college in the country. And with that began the story of the now famous Manipal University. “We have had 40 years of experience in providing engineering and medical education. The quality of medical education at Manipal is excellent. In the 1990s we decided to apply for an autonomous status of the university. Our wish was granted by University Grants Commission (UGC) in 1993. This enabled us to set our own syllabus and set educational parameters to match global standard,” says Dr P Sripathi Rao, dean of Kastubra Medical College, Manipal.
 

Apart from medical colleges the state is also known for 61 pharmacycolleges and 11 nursing colleges. Besides these there also 20 Ayurveda colleges, eight Unani colleges, 16 homeopathy colleges and 165 nursing colleges in the state. However, most of these colleges are centered aroundBangalore or undivided South Canara district. The other two centres are Mysore and Davangere.
 

Yet the mare presence of the sheer number of medical stream colleges does not ensure that the level of education matches with that of the best in the world. Many government run colleges suffer from lack of adequate staff and modern lab facilities.
 

In order for Karnataka to retain its status as the high education hub of the country, more scholars and educational experts are needed as well as more facilities to create them. Currently, students prefer to study in foreign countries. At present, only 13 per cent of Karnataka's populace enrolls in higher education.A large corpus of students at its colleges come from other states, including Delhi, Maharashtra and West Bengal.
 

“If we are to remain an important player in the field of higher education we should not only impart education, but also create new knowledge. We have to emphasise on research,” says Rao.

'Manipal is cosmopolitan'