22, Aug 2011

With new regulations in place, neither enrolling for a doctoral course nor pursuing research at the Mangalore University is going to be easy. The university has revised its regulation for the Ph.D. course from the academic year 2011-12 as per directions from the University Grants Commission to universities. The objective is to improve the quality of research. The revision is in tune with the decision taken by the Karnataka State Higher Education Council to streamline Ph.D. norms in universities across the State.

Entrance Test

To start with, candidates who want to enroll for Ph.D. will have to appear for an objective-type entrance test and an interview. The selected candidates will have to do coursework as pre-preparation for research. The coursework extends over six months (which is a semester), including four months of mandatory attendance of regular classes conducted for them separately in the respective departments. They will have three papers to study during the four months:

• A general subject
• Research methodology
• The chosen area of research

Exams will be conducted in the fifth month. The answer scripts will be evaluated by internal and external evaluators. Those who pass the examinations face a viva voce on the subject they have chosen for research. Only after a successful viva voce will a candidate be selected for doing research work in the sixth month.

The vice chancellor said that the period of research work of the candidates selected will be counted from the day they began their coursework.

Exemptions: He said that those who have an MPhil degree and those who have passed National Level Eligibility Test, State Level Eligibility Test, and Junior Research Fellow (JRF) examinations are exempt from appearing for the written test.  The interview, however, is mandatory.

Tenure: The vice chancellor said that candidates can pursue research work on full-time (by being in the university campus) or part-time basis. Those who pursue it on a full-time basis can complete the work in two years. They will be given a two-year extension if required.

Those who do it on a part-time basis will have to finish the research in three years. They may be given a three-year extension. In some special cases, an additional year of extension may be given to both full-time and part-time candidates. Before submitting the final research work the candidate will have to compulsorily publish two journal articles relating to the research topic.