MAHE to have 3 campuses in next 2 years

Having acquired the “Institute of Eminence” status, Manipal Academy of Higher Education (MAHE) plans to start three new campuses in the next two years.

One will be in Bengaluru, another in Jamshedpur and the third in Sri Lanka, said MAHE Vice Chancellor Dr H Vinod Bhat.

He was speaking at a function held on Tuesday at the Fortune Inn Valley View to celebrate the great occasion and dedicated the great achievement to the founder Dr TMA Pai and MAHE Chancellor Dr Ramdas M Pai.

Dr Bhat spoke of the difficult times Dr TMA Pai went through and the hardships which Dr Ramdas Pai endured to see the University grow into what it is today. “They have overcome tough times and I would like to dedicate this accomplishment to them,” he said.

MHRD’s special status to MAHE is a recognition of all that has been done in the past and acknowledgement of the potential to become a globally ranked University in the future, he said.

Dr Bhat congratulated the Manipal fraternity – faculty, students, non-teaching staff, administrators and all.

“There is so much to do now. Research, academic excellence, new initiatives, embracing technology has to be something different than what
we have done so far. Strengthening internal quality assurance to be led by the quality and compliance team,” he said.

Director Quality and Compliance Dr Sandeep Shenoy presented all the procedures that were followed to get the eminence status. He said that the University, under the leadership of Vice Chancellor Dr Bhat, worked tirelessly for this status. “From the time that the Finance Minister, Arun Jaitley made an announcement in his budget speech about the Centre’s plan to have institutes of eminence in the country, we have been working on it,” said Dr Shenoy.

The MHRD provided the guidelines for all those universities who wished to apply for the status. Initially, the government was to pick 10 institutes from the public sector and 10 from the private with the potential to be among the top 500 in the world rankings in 10 years, eventually making it to top 100. When the announcement was made on July 9, 2018, only six were given the status of eminence, three each from the private and public sectors. MAHE was one of the three in the private sector.

Dr Sandeep added, “We had certain guidelines to follow while submitting our application within a specific period of time. We designed and developed the documents as per the MHRD requirements and submitted a voluminous document which ran close to 26,000 pages. It contained all the strategic future plans of growth for the University on way to becoming a world-class University.”

Pro Chancellor Dr H S Ballal, in his presidential address, acknowledged Dr Bhat’s leadership qualities and spoke of the way in which he led his team to this height.