From this academic year, second year engineering students of Visvesvaraya Technological University (VTU) and affiliated colleges will have to take a compulsory credit course in Kannada. Until now, the subject was an audit course which did not carry marks.
“It will now be a formal course. It will be mandatory for all engineering students to get a total of 175 credits before completing the course,” said H.N. Jagannath Reddy, Registrar of the university.
The VTU has issued a circular in this regard to all its affiliated engineering colleges. Considering that the university has students from across India and other countries who have completed their education in a different medium of instruction and may not have opted for Kannada as their first or second language in school, the university has divided the course into two forms.
Those who have studied Kannada up to class 10 or cleared any equivalent exam offered by the Kannada Sahitya Parishat will have to opt the Kannada Manasu course, while those who do not know how to read, write or speak Kannada will have to opt the Kannada Kali course. Students will have to attend classes twice a week for 16 weeks.
Affiliated colleges will have to submit a report about the implementation of Kannada one month after the classes commence.
The Kannada Development Authority (KDA) in July 2017 had directed all higher education institutions in the State to start teaching Kannada to their students. This was done based on a report submitted in January 2016 by the former Kannada University Vice-Chancellor H.C. Boralingaiah recommending that Kannada be made compulsory in higher education institutions.
Several engineering colleges, however, have been conducting mandatory Kannada classes over the past few years. Archita C., an engineering student who hails from Tamil Nadu and who has learnt Kannada, said, “We learnt the basics of conversational Kannada and it helped us in our day-to-day interaction with local people.”
