A section of academicians and aspiring research scholars at Madurai Kamaraj University have alleged lack of transparency and non-adherence of University Grants Commission (Minimum Standards and Procedure for Award of M.Phil / Ph.D) regulations of 2016 by the university in the admissions to M. Phil and Ph. D programmes this year.
According to them, the issue began with the notification process. Pointing out that the regulations demanded the notification published on website and at least two newspapers to include seats available discipline-wise and institution-wise, an Associate Professor, speaking on anonymity, said that this was not done.
“If it was difficult to list vacancies in newspapers, they could have published it on the university website,” he said.
They also point out that the entrance examination for M. Phil and Ph. D programmes was conducted twice for certain subjects alone to accommodate those who failed to apply and appear on the original date announced in the notification. “There was no proper justification given for this,” the faculty member said.
The research scholars also alleged lack of transparency in announcement of results of the entrance exam. “It was expected that the list of all passed candidates will be put out in public. However, each applicant was allowed to see only his result by providing his or her registration number on the website,” an M. Phil aspirant said.
Importantly, he and many other applicants highlighted that only the ‘Pass’ or ‘Fail’ status of the candidate was shown with no details of marks secured in the entrance exam or interview.
An Assistant Professor with the School of Biological Sciences highlighted that, as per the regulations, the university must have made the admission of candidates after preparing a rank-list. “Instead, only an eligibility certificate was issued to those who ‘Passed’ and were asked to approach the respective university department or affiliated college for admission.”
When contacted, a university official said UGC norms were not violated. Regarding publication of available seats in advance, the official said that the objective of this regulation was to ensure that none of the Research Supervisors had research students more than the allowed numbers under them. “This has been ensured in the admission process,” he said.
Similarly, he said that though the marks secured by each candidate was not published, the admission was done only based on the rank and mark secured by the candidate.
On conducting entrance exams twice, he said that it was done since more number of applications were received for those subjects beyond the deadline. “When the university is facing problems in getting more students enrolled for its programmes, we did not want to deny opportunity for aspiring students just because they missed the date,” he said.
In a recent interaction with the media, Vice-Chancellor P.P. Chellathurai also said that the 2016 UGC regulations for M. Phil and Ph. D programmes were strictly adhered to and MKU was one of the very few universities to do so.
