CHENNAI : The University Grant Commission’s (UGC) recent guidelines which waive off eligibility tests for candidates who hold a full time PhD degree from a foreign university or institution, have not gone down well with guest lecturers from the State.The recent minimum qualification guidelines issued by the UGC state that candidates who hold a PhD degree from a foreign university with a ranking among top 500 in the World University Ranking in either Quacquarelli Symonds (QS) or Times Higher Education or Academic Ranking of the World Universities, do not have to give any eligibility test to apply for the position of an assistant professor.
Indian PhD degree holders can choose not to write the National Eligibility Test (NET) or State Eligibility Test (SET) only if they had registered for the programme prior to July 2009. This means that recent PhD degree graduates will have to write the eligibility tests. There are only ten institutions from India that feature in the top 500. However, it is unclear if the eligibility extends to the Indian universities in the top 500.
“Only those who have had the exposure and money to go abroad or study in one of the top 500 universities, get this privilege. On the other hand, marginalised students will have to prepare for NET or SET,” said Venkatesan Thangaraj from TN All Government Colleges UGC Qualified Guest Lecturers Association.