Manipal, (The Hindu): H. Vinod Bhat, Vice-Chancellor of Manipal Academy of Higher Education (MAHE), said on Tuesday MAHE was planning to start three new campuses in the next two years: in Bengaluru, in Jamshedpur, and in Sri Lanka. He was speaking at a function held to celebrate MAHE getting the ‘Institute of Eminence’ (IoE) tag, here.

Dr. Bhat said that the granting of IoE status to MAHE was the Union Human Resources Development Ministry’s recognition of the instiute’s achievements and congratulated the fraternity.

“Strengthening internal quality assurance has to be led by the quality and compliance team,” he said.

Sandeep Shenoy, director, Quality and Compliance, said: “From the time that the Finance Minister Arun Jaitley announced in the Budget speech about the Union government’s plan to have institutes of eminence in the country, we have been working on it.” The MHRD provided 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. MAHE was one of the three in the private sector, he said.

H.S. Ballal, Pro Chancellor, MAHE, presided over the function. Poornima Baliga, Pro Vice Chancellor, welcomed the gathering Narayana Sabhahit, Registrar, gave the vote of thanks.