HYDERABAD: New University Grants Commission regulations make it impossible to pursue PhD for students who fail to qualify National Eligibility Test (NET), State Eligibility Test (SET) or State Level Eligibility Test (SLET) in most of the universities.
The University Grants Commission on Friday uploaded on its website the University Grants Commission (Minimum Standards and Procedure for Awards of M.Phil/ Ph.D Degree) first amendment, regulations 2017 for which public and stakeholders can provide feedback till June 15.
The new regulations make it impossible for students who do not qualify NET, SET or SLET to pursue PhD at universities which fall under Category-III of the UGC (Categorisation of Universities for Grant of Graded Autonomy) Regulations, 2017. Such students could apply for PhD till now by clearing the university level PhD entrance test. However, the new regulation mandates that only those candidates would be eligible for enrolling to PhD course into Category-III institutions who have qualified the NET, SET or SLET examinations.
Feedback on new rules can be provided till June 15
UGC also put up on its website new regulations on establishment and functioning of deemed-to-be-universities, replacing the regulations which it had made for the same last year, on which feedback can be provided till June 15. The UGC (institutions Deemed to be Universities) Regulations, 2017 differs from its 2016 variant in some ways. One of the most noticeable changes is removal of two clauses governing eligibility criteria for an institution to be declared as deemed-to-be-university.
The 2016 version mandates that faculty in Humanities, Social Sciences and Languages shall have at least 10 publications and faculty of Sciences, Medicine and Engineering shall have at least 15 publications per year, in refereed journals listed by UGC and having an impact factor. However, in the 2017 regulations this clause has been removed.
The 2016 version also had a clause which mandated that an institute should have proven record of securing merit-based extramural research funding from various public or private agencies for being recognized as a deemed to be university.
Even this has been removed from the 2017 version of regulations. The new regulations has some provisions making the work of applying for deemed to be university status to UGC easier for such institutions which are recognized as Category-I by the UGC. UGC also put up another regulation for feedback, the University Grants Commission (Promotion and Maintenance of Standards of Academic Collaboration between Indian and Foreign Educational lnstitutions) Regulations, 2017.