Manipal hopes for nod to its 100-acre varsity this year

It’s perhaps not raining private universities in the state, but there are a couple waiting in the wings. The major one is the Manipal group’s university project planned to be set up in Doddaballapur in Bangalore rural district. The campus, spread over 100 acres, will cost the group about Rs 500 crore.

But, the fluid political situation in the state has put paid to the hopes of the private university as it required a law to be enacted. “We hope that the project will get clearance at the forthcoming Global Investors Meet and get passed at the next assembly session which is expected during July 2012,” said Dr Ranjan Pai, vice-chairman, Manipal Academy of Higher Education (MAHE).

Mooted last year, the university is expected to be set up over a period of five to six years and will ultimately house 15,000 students at its peak in the tenth year of its operations. The campus is set to come up in two phases.

In the first phase, it will offer engineering, business, designing and humanities courses. In phase two of the project, it will see health sciences being introduced, including medicine and dental sciences.

With more and more groups of educational institutions coming forward to establish private universities, the state government is planning to draft common guidelines to ensure the maintenance of standards of teaching, research, examination and extension services in the universities.

The group plans to raise the funds for the project from its internal accruals and debt. “But, most of the funds will come from debt,” added Pai. The state legislature will have to pass separate pieces of legislations to provide statutory status as two private universities had been mooted then, including Manipal University and Arka University and were cleared by the State Cabinet then.

There are two private varsities already in the state — Azim Premji University and Alliance University.

Sources said the rules would stipulate that each university should have a minimum of 25 acres of land, provide reservation to the socially-deprived, follow state government norms while employing 50 per cent of the faculty besides a deposit of Rs 15 crore ‘endowment fund’ with the government.