Friday, January 11, 2019

UGC committee to review MPhil, PhD regulations

Published: 10th January 2019 04:01 AM |

By Express News Service

COIMBATORE: The University Grants Commission (UGC) has constituted a high level committee headed by Indian Institute of Science’s (Bengaluru) former director P Balram to review the MPhil and PhD regulations. The committee will also review the UGC’s quality mandate relating to promotion of research in higher education institutions, Minister of State (Human Resource Development) Satya Pal Singh said in a written reply in the Lok Sabha on Monday.

It was in 2016 that the UGC introduced a new regulation called Minimum Standards and Procedure for Award of MPhil and PhD Degrees, which superseded the 2009 regulation. The 2016 regulation prescribed 55 percentage marks in masters degree for MPhil admission and 55 percentage mark in MPhil for PhD admission. It gave a relaxation of five percentage marks for SC, ST, OBC (non-creamy layer) candidates and for people with disabilities (PwD). While the minimum duration for MPhil is one years, for PhD it is three years. Similarly, the maximum duration for MPhil is two years and for PhD, six years. Any full time regular professor with at least five research publications in referred journal and any full time regular associate or assistant professor with PhD and at least two research publications in referred journal can be recognised as research supervisor (MPhil or PhD guide).

A professor can guide three MPhil and eight PhD scholars at any given point of time. Similarly, an associate professor can guide two MPhil and six PhD, while an assistant professor can guide one MPhil and four PhD scholar at a time. The regulation barred higher education institutions from offering both MPhil and PhD programmes under the distance education mode.

Commenting on the formation of committee to review MPhil and PhD regulation, Association of University Teachers (AUT) former general secretary C Pichandy claimed that this would lead to more confusion. Given that the regulation was introduced only in 2016, only now have many universities adopted the norms and standardised the programmes. There were a few more universities who were yet to adopt the regulation. A review now would only cause confusion, he said. It remains to be seen if this was being done in alignment with UGC’s plan to make PhD as entry qualification for teaching positions in colleges and universities from 2021, he added.

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