Osmania varsity tightens PhD admission process

Osmania University has introduced a complete revamp of its PhD admission process this year. From changing the pattern of its entrance examination to upping the minimum qualification marks to 40% for general category students, the university has decided to make the test tough this year onwards to improve the quality of research.
The university has also upped the minimum marks for qualification for SC/ST students to 25%. According to the university administration, the reforms were brought about after the academic senate and council made unanimous observations that the PhD theses brought out each year by students of the university are poor in quality, when compared to those from other universities. However, faculty members of the university said that PhD admissions were being made tough to prevent more T supporters from becoming research scholars in the university.
The new PhD notification came out last week and the admission procedure is expected to be complete by the end of this month. According to the new rules, merely qualifying in the PhD entrance will not secure a seat for students. Interestingly, from this year onwards the allocation of guides for research scholars will be completely left to deans of their departments. “The deans of each of the colleges will reevaluate the performance of the students and then decide on the guides,” said officials of the admission department.
The new admission procedures are also meant to reduce the number of PhD admissions, officials said. “We admit about 200 PhD scholars in all departments every year. This is too high, when compared to other universities,” admission coordinators said. The move is also meant to discourage candidates who apply for PhD just to extend their stay on campus. “About 40% of the research scholars on campus are those who have already done their post graduation in more than one subjects. They take PhD admission to get hostel accommodation,” a senior professor of the university rued.
Moreover, with the university turning into a hotspot for Telangana politics over the past two years, the administration also wants to monitor people who join the campus just to be part of politics. “The number of applications for PhD has in fact increased during the past one year, as more students take admissions in the university to join politics. While the number of applicants for PhD till 2008 was about 150 per college, last year the number had increased to about 450,” said an official.
OU faculty members rued that the new regulations have not gone down well with the student community. “The candidates who have cleared the University Grants Commission’s National Eligibility Test or those who have MPhil need not appear for entrance examination. There is no need to be apprehensive about the new admission process,” said S Satyanarayana, vice-chancellor, Osmania University.