Mangalore, December 9: The shift of research centres from the State and the Central universities to that of elite institutes in India in the 1950s has curbed major chunk of students from pursuing researches, opined Mangalore University Vice-Chancellor Prof T C Shivashankar Murthy.
He said though the research centres in the elite institutes like IITs and IISc have produced quite a few extraordinary researchers, the fact remains that the opportunity for pursuing quality research has been limited to only one per cent of student population, depriving the rest.
He was delivering the presidential address at the inaugural function of the three-day International Conference on Synthetic and Structural Chemistry (ICSSC-2011) organised by the Department of Studies in Chemistry at Mangalore University on Thursday.
Stressing on the same, he said the immediate need is to shift the research centres from the elite institutes to the state and central universities. The Knowledge Commission too has stressed on the same issue, he said.
The Vice Chancellor said, “to produce quality researches, more number of students should be drawn towards the basic science than the applied science. The percentage of students studying basic science which was 49 earlier has drastically declined to 19 per cent now.
There is a misconception in the minds of student community about the job opportunities and pay scale they get by studying basic science. Policy changes should be made to remove such misconception,” he said.
He also expressed his concern over the reduced number of women participation in the field of research.
Director of Centre for Soft Matter Research Bangalore Dr K A Suresh who was the guest of honour said that Synthetic and Structural Chemistry is a vast field with immense scope for research.
Prof T N Guru Row from Indian Institute of Science delivered the keynote address.
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