Students protest cut in research seats

For most of the week ending 25 March, students at the Jawaharlal Nehru University in Delhi were on strike to protest against the University Grants Commission’s new policy that has drastically reduced the number of MPhil and PhD seats available for the coming 2017-18 academic year from 1,000 to 194, writes Shreya Roy Chowdhury for Scroll.

The higher education regulator’s new regulations restrict the number of research scholars a faculty member of a university, central or state, can supervise at a time. At the Jawaharlal Nehru University – which is primarily a postgraduate and research institution – teachers are already supervising more research scholars than the maximum number they are allowed under the new rules. The university recently released its prospectus effecting the seat cut, as a result of which the intake of students at several of its centres for this session is zero.

Campuses across the country share the institution’s concern. Academics based in central universities in Gujarat, Hyderabad and Puducherry, which have incorporated the new regulations in their rule books, said the policy would impact access to research programmes and even funding for decades to come.
Full report on the Scroll.in site