Have you bought or earned your PhD?
A PhD programme gives you a chance to push the frontiers of human knowledge. Unfortunately, this prestigious degree has fallen prey to commercialism.
Going by some of the recent newspaper advertisements for some universities, a PhD should be the easiest degree to earn in India. No screening tests and interviews, no coursework, and no rigorous assessment of research work. Just a Master’s degree in hand and a pre-determined waiting period will lead you to a doctorate!
Demand for PhD degrees has gone up after University Grant Commission (UGC) accepted PhD as a substitute for National Eligibility Test (NET); there are now more opportunities for doctorates to get employed in higher educational institutions. It’s no surprise then that a number of universities started offering PhD programmes by distance mode much before UGC could set guidelines for them.
“It’s now an open secret that anyone can virtually buy a PhD degree. You just need to pay two to three lakhs to the right person. In some universities, registration, coursework, thesis and viva voce are all effectively managed,” says Dr. Sushil Upadhyay, Assistant Professor at Uttarakhand Sanskrit University.
There are many universities which do not have adequate infrastructure and faculty for even postgraduate-level teaching, but have been offering programmes like PhD and DSc. Mazhar Husnain, a research scholar at Delhi’s Jawaharlal Nehru University, says most of these universities target students who fail to get a place in premier institutions.
What is a good PhD?
A good PhD programme demands rigorous coursework in addition to working on the thesis. JNU-Delhi, for example, requires the research scholar to undertake five to seven assignments on an average, including a seminar/ research paper. The Centre for Development Studies - Thiruvananthapuram, a social science research institution that has a tradition of interdisciplinary research, requires 18-24 assignments to be completed over two years. Coursework helps anchor a researcher in the subject area and aids his growth.
The thesis can be of varying quality across institutions. And nowhere in the country refereed publications are essential for the award of the degree. Such a requirement would go a long way in obviating the problem of researchers submitting low quality work.
Norms for PhD
PhD is the highest degree in the education system which gives you a chance to push the boundaries of human knowledge. According to UGC Regulations (2010) on minimum qualifications for appointment of teachers and other academic staff in universities, NET/ SLET/ SET shall remain the minimum eligibility condition for recruitment of assistant professors in universities. However, candidates, who have been awarded a PhD in accordance with UGC norms, shall be exempted from the requirement of NET/ SLET/ SET. Besides, a PhD continues to be a qualification for all appointments of professors and associate professors through direct recruitment in universities.
Taking advantage of the freedom that the UGC allows them to set the criteria for selecting supervisors for PhD programmes, some universities have, unfortunately, allowed lax supervision, leading to decline in the quality of PhD. UGC requires admission into PhD programme to be based strictly on the results of entrance/screening test and interview along with a six-month full-time and compulsory pre-PhD coursework. Thus, a direct admission into PhD will not be in line with UGC rules. The thesis produced by a research scholar should also be evaluated by at least two experts, out of which at least one should be from outside the State. After this regulation was introduced, most of the State universities started conducting entrance test for doctorate programmes and making some changes in the way they used to conduct such programmes.
