Over the years, Bengaluru has had many avatars — from being known as a pensioner’s paradise to emerging as the country’s IT and startup capital. Now, Bengaluru is well on its way to becoming an education hub with 893 colleges, the maximum in any city across the country, as per the All-India Survey on Higher Education compiled by the Union Ministry of Human Resource Development for the 2017-2018 academic year.
This is the second year that Bengaluru (Urban) has topped the list. However, the number of colleges in Bengaluru this year has seen a decline: in its 2016–17 report, the survey noted that there were 1,025 colleges.
Some of the other ‘districts’ that have secured the top spots in the survey are Jaipur (558) and Hyderabad (472).
Citing Bengaluru’s cosmopolitan culture as a huge draw, M.S. Thimmappa, former Vice-Chancellor of Bangalore University, said students from other parts of the country and abroad want to study in the city. However, he expressed concern over the quality of education being imparted.
“Too many colleges have come up, and many have been established with inadequate infrastructure. Managements think that they can develop the colleges once students pay the fees. But these colleges end up getting very few students, they can’t sustain themselves in the long run, and shut down,” he said.
This could explain the drop from 1,025 colleges in the city to 893 in one year.
In terms of density
In terms of college density, which is defined as the number of colleges per lakh eligible population (in the age group 18 to 23), Karnataka tops the list with 51 colleges per lakh population. The State has a total of 3,593 colleges, including government, aided and private ones.
Although States such as Uttar Pradesh and Maharashtra have a larger number of colleges, the college density to eligible population ratio is lower than that of Karnataka’s.
The survey notes that Uttar Pradesh, which has 6,922 colleges, has 28 colleges for every one lakh population. Similarly, Maharashtra has 4,314 colleges — 33 colleges per lakh population.
