Matter of degrees: UGC should think more on allowing four-year undergraduates to enrol for PhDs

Source: The post is based on the article “Matter of degrees: UGC should think more on allowing four-year undergraduates to enrol for PhDs” published in The Times of India on 29^th September 2022.

Syllabus: GS 2 -Issues relating to development and management of Social Sector/Services relating to Education.

Relevance: About UGC’s decision to allow UG Degree holders to enrol PhD.

News: UGC is set to allow four-year undergraduate degree holders to enrol for PhD programmes.

What are the impacts of the UGC decision?

Advantages: a) In sync with global standards: A number of foreign universities allow undergraduates to skip the postgraduate stage and enrol directly for PhD, b) It will save time and money for students.

Disadvantages: a) Dilutes the requirement of mandatory publication of a research paper before the award of a PhD, b) Quantitatively it will produce more PhDs. For instance, in 2019, the US had 55,000 doctoral recipients. The same year, India had 2 lakh scholars enrolled for PhD and 39,000 doctoral recipients, c) PG course helps students do a deeper study of the discipline and also in research – because a dissertation has to be written. This will be diluted, d) Many PhDs will go on to teach undergraduate and PG students and inadequate knowledge of the core discipline will impair teaching standards.

What UGC needs to do?

Firstly, UGC must ensure that PhD coursework also integrates parts of the PG curriculum.

Secondly, the same yardstick shouldn’t apply across disciplines: A doctoral student can focus on the thesis rather than a research paper but mandatory publication in a quality Scopus-indexed journal could prod the scholar to aim higher.

A UGC study in the top-ranked central university and an IIT found that 75% of the university submissions weren’t in Scopus journals, but the opposite was true for IITs. This is because there are around 30,000 Scopus-indexed journals in STEM and related fields against 14,000 for humanities and social sciences.

So, the UGC should understand that a PG degree may be important in some disciplines before a PhD and not so much in others.