NOT A BREEZE

New Delhi, May 27: The UGC is banning MPhil and PhD programmes offered through correspondence or distance learning under a notification to enforce stricter screening of research programmes at higher education institutions.

Specifying minimum standards and procedures to award MPhil and PhD degrees for the first time, the UGC today unveiled plans that could make substandard research tougher.

Reported first by The Telegraph on December 24, 2008, the notification was announced by UGC chairman Sukhdeo Thorat.

The regulations fix admission procedure, ban a research student from picking his own guide and lay down restrictions on the number of students a faculty member can mentor at a time. They also specify the procedure that must be followed in evaluating the research and awarding the degree.

The research will have to be submitted to the UGC’s Information and Library Network in Ahmedabad.

“The idea is to keep all research at one place, post it online as reference for others and allow prospective researchers to check if what they plan to do is original,” Thorat said. The regulations are likely to be notified soon.

Distance education, however, does not fall strictly within the UGC’s jurisdiction. The HRD ministry is known to be working on an independent set of regulations for distance courses. Till these regulations come into force, the new UGC rules will prevail, Thorat clarified.

The UGC also declared amended regulations specifying qualifications to teach in higher education institutions. These are based on recommendations of a UGC committee under Bhalchandra Mungekar.

The new qualifications make the national eligibility test (NET) or the state eligibility tests (SETs) mandatory for teaching unless the aspirant holds a PhD degree. Those who obtain PhDs from institutions meeting the new UGC regulations programmes are exempt from the NET and the SETs.

Those who are already teaching will not be affected. Those who have a PhD but are not yet teaching will be affected.

The UGC will set up a committee to scrutinise such PhDs. If the committee concludes that the PhD was obtained from an institution that broadly met the new norms for research programmes at the time the degree was granted, the candidate will be exempt from the NET and the SETs.

If the committee finds that the PhD was obtained from an institution that followed a significantly different set of norms for research programmes than the ones laid down in the new regulations, no exemption will be granted. The PhD scholar, in such a scenario, will need to clear the NET or the SETs to teach.