PART-TIME DEGREES- PhD REGULATIONS 

4. Admissions procedure 

• There are no major changes in the procedure for admissions. As was the norm so far, universities and colleges will be free to admit students through the NET/JRF qualification route as well as entrance exams at the level of the institutions.

• Based on the feedback from stakeholders, the proposed common entrance test for PhDs has been left out of the new Regulations.

5. Research Supervisors

• Eligible professors, associate professors and assistant professors can continue to guide up to eight, six and four PhD candidates respectively at any given time, as earlier.
• Earlier, professors, associate professors and assistant professors could also guide three, two and one M. Phil scholars respectively over and above their PhD candidates.

• The new Rules also bar faculty members with less than three years of service left before superannuation from taking new research scholars under their supervision.
• Each supervisor can also guide up to two international research scholars on a supernumerary basis over and above the permitted number of domestic PhD scholars.
• Universities and colleges have been allowed to frame their own rules governing admissions of international PhD students.

6. Improving quality 

• To ensure the quality of their output, research scholars had to appear before a Research Advisory Committee once in six months and present the progress of their work for evaluation and further guidance.
• They will now have to do this every semester.
• The new Regulations retain the clause that mandates institutions to develop a mechanism using "well-developed software applications to detect plagiarism in research work".

7. No need to publish

• The UGC has been grappling with this issue for quite some time, particularly with the proliferation of so-called "predatory journals" where many doctoral scholars were found publishing their research in return for a fee.
•  In 2019, a UGC panel recommended that the publication of research material in such journals or presentations in conferences organised by their publishers should not be considered for academic credit in any form.
• In draft regulations floated in March this year, the UGC had proposed universities be allowed to draw up their guidelines in this area and sought public feedback on replacing the term must: with "desirable". 
• But in the final regulation's requirement has been dispensed with altogether.
• By removing the mandatory clause, the commission is trying to ease some pressure on scholars so that they can focus more on high-quality research that will automatically lead to their research finding space in top journals.
• In a study involving one central university and an IIT between 2017 and 2019, the UGC found that in the case of the university, as much as 75 per cent of the submissions were in journals which are not Scopus-indexed.
• The IIT, where such submissions are not mandatory, saw 79 per cent of scholars make it to Scopus-indexed journals.
• That also appears to have guided the UGC's decision.

8. Provision for a part-time PhDs

• This is a new category introduced by the regulations. 
• Although an existing feature in the IITs, this will be new for most universities and colleges.
• The eligibility conditions are the same for both full-time and part-time candidates. Their PhD work will be assessed the same way as for full-time PhD students.
• In addition to meeting the regular criteria, the part-time PhD candidates will also have to produce a No-objection Certificate or NOC from their employer.
• Apart from stating that the prospective part-time PhD candidate employee is permitted to pursue studies on a part-time basis, the NOC will have to spell out that they will be given sufficient time for research work.
• The workplace will require facilities in the employee's field of research as a doctoral scholar.
• Over the years, annual enrolment figures in PhD have risen, but it still accounts for a very small share of the higher education pie. 
• Between 2015-16 and 2019-20, the enrolment at PhD level increased from 1, 26, 451 to 2, 02, 550 (0.5 per cent of the total enrolment in higher education), according to the latest available All India Survey on Higher Education (AISHE) report 2019-20.
• Also, most PhDs in India are in the field of engineering and technology, followed by natural sciences.

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