Now, CU to allow college teachers to guide PhD students

The Calcutta University will allow college teachers to guide students for PhD programme, Professor Ashutosh Ghosh, Vice-Chancellor said on Thursday.

University Grants Commission (UGC) had sometime back allowed college teachers to coach PhD students. This facility will be available in 150 colleges.

Professor Ghosh said this would help college students immensely. "There are good teachers in different colleges and they will be able to guide the students for the PhD programme. This will reduce pressure on the university teachers and on the whole, the volume of research will go up" he maintained.

The CU authorities would examine the infrastructure of the colleges particularly, the condition of the libraries and the laboratories before giving the permission. So long, only the university teachers could guide PhD students and in case of college teachers, they had to do it through the university.

In autonomous colleges like Narendrapur Ramakrishna Mission, Belur Vidyamandira and St Xavier's College (now university) there are many students pursuing PhDs. The authorities of Maulana Azad College and Scottish Church College have already approached the university.

The decision has received mixed reaction from the teaching community. Though the teachers have principally agreed to the proposal of the University, many of them felt that the state government should give money for upgrading the infrastructure in case of aided colleges. Only few colleges have digital libraries and the condition of the laboratories need to be upgraded.

Moreover, in most of the colleges, the teachers do not have separate chambers and all the teachers sit in the staff room. If PhD is introduced in colleges, separate chambers will have to be constructed for the guides and this will incur additional expenditure for the colleges.