Monday, 08 March, 2010
From July, Only Those Who Score 55% Or More In Their Masters Will Be Eligible To Do Research

Chennai: New regulations governing the conduct of doctoral programmes (PhD) which will take effect from July 2010 at the University of Madras will not only raise the eligibility bar for research scholars but also help crack the whip on errant research guides.

As per the new regulations, which were approved by the university’s academic council last month, only candidates who have obtained a minimum aggregate score of 55% in their master’s degree will be admitted to PhD programmes from July. For Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe candidates and for candidates who had completed the postgraduate degree before 1991, the minimum eligibility score will be only 50% for admission to the PhD programme. Earlier, candidates with a second class in Master’s degree or a minimum aggregate score of 50% in the qualifying examinations were allowed to enroll for a PhD. The new rules also provide for withdrawal of recognition for PhD supervisors (guides). “If a supervisor is found to be involved in plagiarism, moral turpitude with fraudulent academic accomplishments and other activities prejudicial to the reputation of the university, etc, his / her guideship will be withdrawn without assigning any reason,” the regulation on withdrawal of recognition said. Such a provision for removal of errant guides did not exist earlier.

Also, a research supervisor will not be permitted to register candidates for PhD in the last one year of his / her service. To qualify as a guide, a person should not only have published at least two research publications, other than his/her own PhD work, in reputed journals but should also “be either the first author or the corresponding author in such publications.” Now, there are cases where guides are one among several authors of a research publication. Sometimes, PhD students are forced to include the name of their guides as one of the co-authors of a research paper.

From July, professors cannot guide more than eight PhD scholars, both fulltime and part-time candidates including re-registered candidates, at a given point of time. Earlier, university department professors were permitted to guide up to 10 candidates.

Research scholars, who wish to submit their thesis before the minimum prescribed period of research to be put in by them, will also be governed by new regulations now. As per this, such candidates must submit evidence of having completed the required work for the thesis by way of at least four (instead of two earlier) publications in the topic of PhD research in recognised, referred or accredited journals as first author. The revised regulations shall not be applicable for those who are scheduled to submit their thesis before December this year. Such candidates will be governed by the existing regulations. Raising The Bar The other salient features of the revised PhD regulations of the University of Madras to be effective from July are:

• Research & Project Fellows, Research & Project Assistants in extension departments approved by university or appointed in projects funded by government and recognised agencies are eligible to register for full-time PhD
• Teachers of higher secondary school, high school and polytechnic with two years experience after qualifying degree can register for part time PhD
• Teachers & non-teacher candidates can register for part-time PhD in affiliated college in non-laboratory course in humanities, languages, social sciences, commerce, mathematics and statistics
• PhD students can sent their thesis for evaluation to a second Indian examiner if all three foreign examiners in the panel failed to send the commendation on the thesis within a reasonable time