MU to set up school of studies

A committee has been formed to draft a statute, new system likely next year

If everything goes as per plan, Mangalore University will have different schools of studies on its Mangalagangotri campus from the next academic year.

According to the Vice-Chancellor of the university, T. C. Shivashankara Murthy, the university has asked its statute committee to draft a statute for setting up the schools of studies. The statute needs to be vetted by the government. Preceding this, the statute would have to be ratified by the decision-making bodies of the university.

Prof. Murthy said that setting up of schools of studies was nothing but bringing all postgraduate departments of related streams under one banner. For example School of Life Sciences would be set up by bringing the present departments of applied botany, applied zoology, bio-sciences and microbiology under one roof without merging them. A senior most teacher across the departments would be the director of the school.

According to Prof. Murthy, there are three major advantages of setting up of the schools. Shifting of teachers’ posts among the departments within a school becomes more flexible; funds allocated to departments could be spent more judiciously; and students could study more inter-disciplinary subjects to expand the horizon of their knowledge, he said.

He said that in the existing system if a post of a teacher was to be shifted from one department to another it required the approval of the Syndicate, the highest decision making body of the university, and the government. When a school is set up a vice-chancellor or the registrar (administration) could transfer the post as per the requirement.

Allocation of funds

At present, unutilised funds cannot be transferred from one department to another as budgetary allocations are made department-wise. When a school of studies is formed the grants and the funds could be allocated to departments based on the actual requirement. He said that when school of studies comes into place, students could learn more internal subjects within a stream under the choice-based credit semester system introduced two years ago.

At present students are allowed to study either one external subject (for e.g. an applied botany student can take up a statistics paper) or one internal subject within a stream (for e.g. applied botany student studying molecular biology).

When the school of studies is introduced an applied botany student can study three papers of molecular biology, bio-technology and bio-diversity along with a paper of statistics.