MAHE is now Manipal University

The 54-year Manipal Academy of Higher Education (MAHE), will now be known as Manipal University.

The academy in its board meeting on December 9, has decided on the new name which will come in effect from January 2007 across all MAHE campuses in the country and the world.

MAHE was the first university in the private sector to be granted the deemed university status in 1993 by the government of India and the name change comes in the wake of University Grants Commission (UGC) giving deemed universities the power to change names after a stipulated period of time.

It is run under the name MAHE Trust and has got the trust registered in the new name "" Manipal University Trust. Registration of the university however, will take place early January. Post registration, the university will inform its status to the UGC.

"The whole process will take sometime and once the formalities are done, we will give wide publicity on the new name," said H S Ballal, pro chancellor, MAHE.

MAHE has established branches in Sikkim, Mangalore, Nepal, Malaysia and Dubai, and is now looking at setting up a Medical and Engineering college in Mauritius and also to have a twinning (a course pursued partly in the parent college and partly in a foreign college.

The degree is provided by the foreign college) programme arrangement with a Sri Lankan institute. It is also planning to start an Allied Health Sciences institute in Dubai.

Currently, 25,000 NRI students are studying on the MAHE campus and the institute has a waiting list of around 200 students.

A self-financing university, MAHE earns around Rs 250 crore a year and dedicates 15 per cent (Rs 37.5 lakh) from the revenue to facilitate research activities besides encouraging faculty and students, through various incentives, to take up research.

MAHE which started with Kasturba Medical College, in Mangalore in 1953, today has 23 professional colleges and students from 51 countries taking professional training in medicine, dentistry, nursing, pharmacy, engineering, management, hotel administration, law and the arts and sciences on its campuses.