Describing itself as "one of the premier engineering institutes" of the south Indian state of Karnataka, KLE was founded in 1947. Today it is spread across three cities; its law is school based in Bangalaru (Bangalore).
A university since 2012, KLE’s current focuses are engineering, management and law. But it has set itself the target of emerging as a multidisciplinary research university by 2031.
It currently enrols more than 8,000 undergraduate students and 700 postgraduates. These are split across the school of engineering, which offers 1,340 undergraduate places each year, the school of management and the departments of computing, commerce, legal studies and science. In 2023, it awarded 1,619 undergraduate degrees, about two-thirds to men, while a small majority of the 245 postgraduate degrees went to women.
In 2022, KLE was accredited at A grade by the National Assessment and Accreditation Council, with a grade point average of 3.1 out of 4. It was ranked 180th among India’s numerous engineering institutions in the 2021 National Institutional Rankings Framework. KLE was named as one of five global institutions to watch in a MIT-JWEL survey of engineering education.
