PhD enrollment in TN went up 19% in 2019-20, says survey

PhD enrollment in TN went up 19% in 2019-20, says survey

Ragu.Raman@timesgroup.com

Chennai:12.06.2021

Enrollment for PhD in Tamil Nadu increased 19% in 2019-20 compared to the year before, data from the All India Survey on Higher Education (AISHE) released on Thursday showed. The enrollment for MPhil programmes declined by 20% in the state during the same period.

“From Tamil Nadu, 30,600 students (15,828 men and 14,832 women) enrolled for PhD in 2019-20 while 25,820 students registered in 2018-19,” the survey stated. While 9,144 chose to pursue MPhil in 2018-19, the number fell to 7,133 in 2019-20.

Educationists opined that the increase may have been due to PhD being made a minimum qualification for entry-level assistant professor posts in universities that year. Rankings such as NIRF also give more weightage to those with PhDs.

“Statutory bodies such as University Grants Commission (UGC) and All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) have prescribed PhD as a minimum qualification for the post of assistant professor in universities. If they want to enter state-funded universities, they need a PhD. This may have been the reason for the spike in PhD enrollment while that for MPhil dipped,” said S P Thyagarajan, former vicechancellor of Madras University. “UGC has also advised all universities not to offer MPhil programmes from 2021,” he said.

Thyagarajan called for improving existing benchmarks for PhD to produce better researchers and teachers.

“State Eligibility Test (SET) was not conducted in the past few years. That could have been a reason for high enrollment in PhDs,” said P Duraisamy, former vice-chancellor of University of Madras, adding that the university has made publishing of two research papers before thesis submission mandatory.

“More students are joining PhD programmes due to increase in government colleges and availability of scholarships,” said S Swaminathan, advisor of NET/SLET association. He added that the government should focus on improving infrastructure to improve the quality of PhDs.