MAHE set to take in 450 PhD students this year

MANGALURU: From 158 PhD students at Manipal Academy of Higher Education (MAHE) in 2014 to 350 in 2019, the number is expected to be around 450 this year.
“At MAHE, the focus clearly has to be on top-quality research. We want to push our doctoral programmes and ensure that enrolment crosses 1,000 per year very soon,” said vice-chancellor Dr H Vinod Bhat.
Dr H Shyamala Hande, director of the Centre for Doctoral Studies, said a substantial number of the students will be supported by the Dr TMA Pai scholarships for full-time PhD programmes.“MAHE is now an institute of eminence. We are also looking forward to having more UGC-CSIR-NET, DST-Inspire and other national scholarship holders. We offer incentives like fee waiver, conference travel and project support for those with national scholarships,” said Hande who teaches histology at Melaka Manipal Medical College.
“We are proud that 61% of the enrolled candidates are women, although there is no such discrimination during admissions. This year, we are expecting a decent number of international students too,” she added
One of the reasons for the increase in registrations is that PhD is now the minimum qualification for an academic career in universities in India. Soon after doing masters, students aged 22-25 enrol for PhD and complete the course in four or five years. “During the last admissions, the boom was in pharmacy and engineering. These streams require a lot of funding and lab facilities for PhD projects and MAHE supported many competitive projects through intramural funding. The numbers have increased in health and biological sciences; and momentum is picking up in management, commerce, humanities, social sciences and some not-so-common disciplines such as European studies, geopolitics and hospitality management,” said Hande.
The Centre for Doctoral Studies selects, enrols, supports and retains academically distinguished students. A final count of students is taken in December, as MAHE gets applications through the year. Besides, admission is only one step, students have to register their research topics and defend their proposals before they can be counted. There are two orientation programmes in the year which is followed by the admissions of Dr TMA Pai scholars. Admissions for this category are done in January and July, said Hande.