BANGALORE: While Union Minister M Veerappa Moily is still taking up the cause to make University Visvesvarya College of Engineering (UVCE) a centre for excellence and seeking a grant of Rs 100 crore for its development as promised earlier this year, the World Bank, recognising the UVCE's need, has granted two centres of excellence for the college. Under this scheme, Rs 5 crore each would be given for the setting up of the two centres, which will undertake interdisciplinary research, in its two campus near KR circle and Jnana Bharathi Campus. Apart from the centres, the World Bank has also recognised UVCE and has selected the college for a grant of Rs 22.5 crore under the Technical Education Quality Improvement programme (TEQIPII). This is an externally assisted project of the Government of India funded by International Development Association (World Bank) to improve the quality of technical education in the technical institutions across the country.
Of the 31 colleges selected in the country under this scheme, 14 colleges are from Karnataka with UVCE being the only government college in the list.
"Under this programme, the money can be used only for faculty training programmes and to purchase equipment to facilitate research. No development of buildings is possible under this scheme," said Principal of UVCE Dr K R Venugopal. He said that this scheme would help in enhancing the 10 new postgraduate courses while five more courses will be introduced in the next academic year. The courses include Space Technology, Nano Technology, Data Mining and Date Warehousing Systems and Very Large Scale Integration (VLSI).