Bharathidasan Varsity mulls changes to newly adopted research system

TRICHY: Bharathidasan University is considering some changes to the newly adopted PhD guidelines that came into effect on July 1. The university had introduced the regulations in tune with the UGC (Minimum Standards and Procedure for award of Ph.D. degree) Regulations dated 5th May 2016.

While the new set of regulations was aimed at bringing in quality in research work, a section of teachers took strong exception to some of the reforms that were introduced. For instance, the new regulations make the research scholar bear the costs incurred in conducting the doctoral committee meeting. The annual meeting is conducting to analyse the progress made in the research work by calling an expert. Earlier, the expense was met from the fee paid by the student during the registration of his or her PhD. But, as per the new regulation, the research scholar will have to bear the TA/DA and sitting fee of the external member of the doctoral committee.

“This will give licence to the research guides to collect money from the scholars,” said the state vice-president of Tamil Nadu Government College Teachers Association (TNGCTA) G Ramesh. “Once permission is granted to the research guide to collect money from students, the university may not be able to fix the amount,” he said while highlighting instances of victimisation of scholars by their guide. “We met the vice-chancellor to raise our concerns and he acknowledged and assured us to consider the request, said Ramesh.

Vice-chancellor P Manisankar told TOI that the university was ready to consider genuine requests as they concerned research scholars. “As far as the fee is concerned, we have only made a marginal increase. But since we have combined some of the fees that were collected separately, it appears to be exorbitant to some of the teachers. We are working on revising the fee structure,” he said.

Similarly, there were requests to induct teachers from Tamil Nadu as one among the panel of examiners, which the university had accepted. “But the demand to scrap the common entrance test is unacceptable as we cannot deviate from the UGC regulations beyond a certain limit,”he said.