75% of Madras University PhD theses violated procedures
Siddharth.Prabhakar@timesgroup.com
Chennai: About 75% of PhD candidates and guides of University of Madras did not follow due process while working on theses between 2015 and 2017, leading to a fall in standards of research, an internal review has found.
The review done by the examinations wing of the university found a “well-oiled machinery that runs the PhD manufacturing industry,” as a source put it. “This consists of professors and examiners, including external examiners from Singapore and Sri Lanka,” said the source. The university was without a vicechancellor between January 2016 and May 2017.
Some of the university professors were found to have not constituted doctoral committees mandated under the university rules to monitor candidates’ progress every six months. A group of six external examiners were found to have evaluated 100 of 600 theses submitted during 2016-17. TOI has a list of these professors.
“It takes at least three months if a professor has to rigorously examine a 300-page PhD submission. We found some of them had done it in a week and some others in even a day. It’s ridiculous,” said a senior professor who is an external examiner for foreign universities.
Now, candidates will have to fill online proforma every year
Some of the examiners checked the theses of different subjects and gave identical reports for different candidates of the same guide, the review said. Most of the theses that did not follow the prescribed rigour came from the departments of commerce, management studies, economics and geography of the university, as well as its network of affiliated colleges.
According to university guidelines, a doctoral committee to be constituted for every candidate should comprise three professors and subject experts who would conduct ‘course work’ exams and review the progress of the candidate at least once every six months for full-time PhD candidates, and once a year for parttime ones. The PhD section in the university has found that in many cases the final thesis was submitted without the doctoral committee report or the exam results.
Each thesis is evaluated by three external examiners, one from outside the university, another from outside the state and the third from a foreign country. These examiners, who are empowered to point out deficiencies, were found to have played along when the rigour was compromised.
Two professors from two top Chennai collegessubmittedidentical lists of external examiners to the university for approval last year. The only differencewas that each was on the other’s list. Even the alignment, punctuation and order of names in the separate PhD submissions were the same. The university has blacklisted one such foreign examiner, a commerce professor of Indian origin from Singapore, who evaluated20thesesfrom theuniversity in nine months. A dozen PhD theses for which this examiner’s name was proposedby university guides, are now under the examination wing’s scanner.
To plug these holes, candidates would now have to fill in an online proforma every year which wouldincludethedoctoral committee minutes, said vicechancellor P Duraisamy. “The candidate would also have to present at least two papers and attend national conferencesduring thefirstfour years of thework. In the fifth year, the dean (research) or a senior professor would participate in the doctoral committee and advise discontinuation if progress is unsatisfactory,” he said.
Siddharth.Prabhakar@timesgroup.com
Chennai: About 75% of PhD candidates and guides of University of Madras did not follow due process while working on theses between 2015 and 2017, leading to a fall in standards of research, an internal review has found.
The review done by the examinations wing of the university found a “well-oiled machinery that runs the PhD manufacturing industry,” as a source put it. “This consists of professors and examiners, including external examiners from Singapore and Sri Lanka,” said the source. The university was without a vicechancellor between January 2016 and May 2017.
Some of the university professors were found to have not constituted doctoral committees mandated under the university rules to monitor candidates’ progress every six months. A group of six external examiners were found to have evaluated 100 of 600 theses submitted during 2016-17. TOI has a list of these professors.
“It takes at least three months if a professor has to rigorously examine a 300-page PhD submission. We found some of them had done it in a week and some others in even a day. It’s ridiculous,” said a senior professor who is an external examiner for foreign universities.
Now, candidates will have to fill online proforma every year
Some of the examiners checked the theses of different subjects and gave identical reports for different candidates of the same guide, the review said. Most of the theses that did not follow the prescribed rigour came from the departments of commerce, management studies, economics and geography of the university, as well as its network of affiliated colleges.
According to university guidelines, a doctoral committee to be constituted for every candidate should comprise three professors and subject experts who would conduct ‘course work’ exams and review the progress of the candidate at least once every six months for full-time PhD candidates, and once a year for parttime ones. The PhD section in the university has found that in many cases the final thesis was submitted without the doctoral committee report or the exam results.
Each thesis is evaluated by three external examiners, one from outside the university, another from outside the state and the third from a foreign country. These examiners, who are empowered to point out deficiencies, were found to have played along when the rigour was compromised.
Two professors from two top Chennai collegessubmittedidentical lists of external examiners to the university for approval last year. The only differencewas that each was on the other’s list. Even the alignment, punctuation and order of names in the separate PhD submissions were the same. The university has blacklisted one such foreign examiner, a commerce professor of Indian origin from Singapore, who evaluated20thesesfrom theuniversity in nine months. A dozen PhD theses for which this examiner’s name was proposedby university guides, are now under the examination wing’s scanner.
To plug these holes, candidates would now have to fill in an online proforma every year which wouldincludethedoctoral committee minutes, said vicechancellor P Duraisamy. “The candidate would also have to present at least two papers and attend national conferencesduring thefirstfour years of thework. In the fifth year, the dean (research) or a senior professor would participate in the doctoral committee and advise discontinuation if progress is unsatisfactory,” he said.
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