JNU Admission 2017: Seats for MPhil, PhD go down by 86 percent

A pall of gloom descended over students seeking admission to Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), after the new prospectus revealed a massive seat reduction of 86 percent in MPhil and PhD programmes for the upcoming 2017-18 session.

The prospectus states that only 194 seats will be offered for research aspirants against last year's seats which were 1,174 in number.

Turning all their protests futile, the students were left dissatisfied following the prospectus released by JNU late Tuesday night.

The new admission policy shows seat cuts in MPhil and PhD programmes across different courses in line with the University Grants Commission (UGC) guidelines dated May 5, 2016.

The seats include integrated MPhil-PhD, junior research fellowships and direct PhD courses.

In the School of Social Sciences, all 13 centres had announced intake last year. This year, however, only two centres will take in students. One of these is the Centre for Study of Regional Development, which can only take in one student. Moreover, there will be no intake for Centre for Study of Social Systems which had an intake of 38 in 2016.

The School for International Studies has been badly hit, with only three out of its 13 centres offering seats for integrated MPhil and PhD programmes, with the number of offered seats reduced to 11 from last year's 238.

Several schools, including the School of Computer and Systems Sciences, School of Computational and Integrative Sciences, and School of Biotechnology have zero intake.

The UGC notification also puts a cap on the number of students a professor can supervise during their MPhil and PhD.

According to the notification, a research supervisor or co-supervisor, who is a professor, cannot guide more than three MPhil and eight PhD scholars.

An associate professor, as research supervisor, can guide a maximum of two MPhil and six PhD scholars, while an assistant professor can guide a maximum of one MPhil and four PhD scholars.

Further the University has also stated that: "The examination would be held on an all-India basis and question papers for the same would be as per UGC Regulations 2016, i.e., 50 percent Research Methodology and 50 percent Subject specific. The entrance examination would be of qualifying nature with 50 percent qualifying marks followed by viva voce."

The application process for the different courses in the University began on March 21 and closes on April 5.

Earlier, the Delhi High Court, last week had dismissed a plea by some students challenging the JNU admission policy. The court said: "UGC guidelines are binding to all universities."