The 34-year-old Mangalore University will mark another academic milestone by offering inter-disciplinary research for doctorate degrees shortly, according to its Vice-Chancellor K. Byrappa.
He told The Hindu that an inter-disciplinary board will be constituted within a month to decide who could guide researchers and work out the criterion for the selection of research candidates. The board will also fix the qualifications and the frame guidelines for the inter-disciplinary research and the research candidates will be selected through an entrance test.
Mr. Byrappa, who obtained his Ph.D. in Materials Science from Moscow State University, Russia, in 1981, said that all Ph.D. degree holders cannot guide inter-disciplinary research candidates.
They should have published research works in inter-disciplinary subjects other than their parent subject.
Citing his own example he said that though his parent subject was Materials Science, he is an authorised guide of the Mysore University in Physics, Bio-technology, Earth Science, Chemistry and Environmental Science.
The Vice-Chancellor said that the university, which has obtained A-grade from the National Assessment and Accreditation Council, introduced choice-based credit system for its post-graduate courses two years ago.
It offered the opportunity for students to study inter-disciplinary subjects from among a given list and introducing inter-disciplinary research would be another step forward.
Meanwhile, according to A.M. Khan, liaison officer for admitting international students at the university, introducing research in inter-disciplinary subjects might attract more foreign students to the university in the coming years.
Of the 17 foreign students, who joined the university a month ago, 15 have enrolled for various doctorate degree programmes. Of them, five have shown interest in doing research in Business Administration, three in Computer Science, two in Economics and one each in Bio-science, Chemistry, English, Journalism and Materials Science.
He said under the inter-disciplinary research for example, a post-graduate in Electronics could do research relating to Geo-informatics, a postgraduate in Economics could take up Commerce or a postgraduate in Zoology could do it in Bio-science.