PUNE: Although, the government has been emphasising on importance of research in the Higher Educational Institutions, the changing policies have affected the PhD admissions in Savitribai Phule Pune University (SPPU). The PhD admissions on SPPU campus have decreased over the last five years from over 700 seats to nearly 300 seats now.
Whereas, PhD seats at colleges, which have been identified as research centres by the university, are also remaining vacant.
This year, only 324 seats were available for candidates on the campus. The PhD admission process for 2018-19 is currently underway. In 2015-16, about 742 candidates were selected for PhD against 792 seats. In 2017-18, 616 seats were available and around 585 candidates were selected. The officials informed that during 2016-17, no PhD admissions were recorded because the new guidelines for PhD were declared in July 2016.
Already, the ban on professor appointments since 2012 by the Maharashtra government, has left several positions of professors and associate professors vacant in the varsity, ultimately affecting the intake capacity of PhD. The changing policies by the University Grants Commission (UGC) have added to it. In 2016, UGC had introduced new PhD guidelines which stated that a professor could guide eight students, an associate professor can guide six students and an assistant professor can have four students. “Since 2017, at least 60 professors have retired from campus. On the other hand, there has been no recruitment in the past few years which has created a gap,” SPPU Vice-Chancellor Nitin Karmalkar told Sakal Times.
Before 2016, professors, associate professors and assistant professors were allowed to guide 6 students each.
“According to UGC guidelines, associate and assistant professors were restricted to a certain amount of students, while professors could guide six students which could have increased the number of intakes. Also, not many assistant professors have a PhD under their domain. This further increases the gap. Therefore, only limited guides are actually available for sanctioning PhD to students,” said Karmalkar.
He also stated that the gap between the imbalance ratio of PhD guide and PhD students will reduce slowly but it will take time.
Nevertheless, the UGC has made rules and regulations stringent for PhD guides. According to a new policy released by UGC this year, outside or college professors will not be allowed to be PhD guides on university campuses. This has further shrunk the availability of PhD guides. At present, only 208 PhD guides are available at SPPU.
Speaking about the vacant seats at the college-level PhD admissions, SPPU Deputy Registrar Uttam Chavan said, “There were guides available at research centres (colleges) but qualified or interested students for PhD were lacking. Therefore, there is a difference.”
DECREASE IN THE NUMBER
- There are around 200 research centres affiliated to the university.
- For 2018-19, as many as 3,364 seats were vacant for PhD admissions and around 6,400 students have qualified for the interview round.
- At present, there are a total of 1,863 PhD guides available at these centres.
- In 2015-16, around 1,863 candidates were admitted against 4,550 seats.
- In 2017-18, 2,347 candidates were admitted against 3,330 seats.
