Tulu is all set to enter undergraduate education with four degree colleges under Mangalore University coming forward to teach it as a second language paper from the 2019-20 academic year.
The colleges are P. Dayananda Pai and P. Satish Pai Government First Grade College, Car Street, Mangaluru; Manjunath Pai Memorial Government First Grade College, Karkala; Ramakrishna College, Mangaluru; and SVS College, Bantwal.
Of them, the Academic Council of the university, at its latest meeting on March 19, approved the proposal of the Government First Grade College at Car Street to teach the language for the courses like BA, B.Com, B.Sc, BCA, BSW, and BBA.
Sources in Karnataka Tulu Sahitya Academy told The Hindu that the remaining three colleges have now written to the university that they are interested in teaching Tulu as second language from the next academic year.
The university has prepared three types of syllabi to teach Tulu – as the second language paper, as an optional subject, and as an elective paper under the Choice-Based Credit System (CBCS) which the university will adopt for its undergraduate programmes from next academic year. It is up to the colleges to take a call on whether to introduce it as a language paper or as an optional paper.
Sources also said that so far, no college has come forward to teach Tulu as an optional subject under the proposed CBCS.
Common paper
According to A.M. Khan, Registrar (Administration) at the university, there will be only one common Tulu language paper for all streams, whereas other language optional papers differ for different streams of undergraduate education.
With some degree colleges coming forward to introduce it, Tulu now gets academic patronage from primary education to higher education up to post-graduation level, but with a gap in between. It has not been introduced in pre-university level.
University Evening College, a constituent college of the university, in the city has been offering postgraduation in Tulu from the current academic year. About 20 students have enrolled for it.
The government had, through an order on March 26, 2010, allowed schools in Dakshina Kannada and Udupi to teach Tulu from Class 6. The first batch of 18 Class 10 students with Tulu as the third optional language passed out in 2015. It was followed by 25 students in 2016, 283 students in 2017, and 417 students in 2018.
In all, 650 students are expected to appear for the Tulu paper in the Class 10 examinations, which began on Thursday.
