BHUBANESWAR: Despite the Odisha State Higher Education Council (OSHEC) creating an ecosystem to support research, not many students of state’s public universities are coming forward to pursue it.
Under the Odisha University Research and Innovation Incentivisation Plan (OURIIP) scheme launched by Higher Education department in 2018-19, OSHEC provides seed funding (Rs 7 lakh annually) to 40 young faculty with PhD degree from state public universities and research fellowship (Rs 15,000 every month) to 175 students who have qualified the National Eligibility Test (NET) to pursue PhD in nine subjects every academic session.
For this session, OSHEC has received more than 40 applications from faculty but when it comes to research fellowship, it has received just around 60 applications from students, sources in the department informed. In fact, attracting students for research fellowships remains a difficult task for the OSHEC as since inception of the scheme, only 40 to 60 students apply for it every year. Reasons, department officials said, are many including academic laxity and a miniscule number of students qualifying NET.
As per a department report, roughly five per cent students qualify NET in science and technical subjects. Although the department had last year proposed to do away with NET criteria to draw more students towards research, it has not gone ahead with it as the move would question the quality of students being selected for research as per UGC norms.
Another hurdle is lack of guides. For being eligible for research fellowship, a student needs to be registered under an approved research guide after completing the pre-PhD course work at his/her respective universities. “Currently, almost 50 to 60 per cent of faculty positions in all the 11 general public universities are vacant. In the absence of faculty, there is an acute shortage of guides in these institutions,” said a vice-chancellor, requesting anonymity.
This is also why, many of the universities are yet to complete their six-month pre-PhD course work including the Utkal University. Guest faculty members cannot guide research scholars as per the UGC norms which state that only permanent faculty members who possess a PhD and have their research published in peer-reviewed journals can be recognised as research guides.
OSHEC officials said a year back, they had sought a report from all public universities on the number of students registering for PhD and completing it on time to track and bring them under research fold. However, except three universities, none provided the information, they added.
On Monday, a meeting between the OSHEC and vice-chancellors of all the universities was held where the former asked the latter to complete pre-PhD course work on time and facilitate faster PhD registration of eligible candidates.