This year, Delhi University will not admit any PHD aspirant in microbiology and 40 fewer aspirants in geography and 39 fewer in Hindi than last year.
On 3rd June, university started the registration process for MPhil, PhD courses, the information bulletin showed that in 11 courses the number of seats for PhD admissions had been reduced. There are a total of 53 courses in which PhD is offered by university.
This reduction in seats was result of implementation of UGC regulations of 2016, in which commission put a limit on number of MPhil and PhD aspirants a professor, associate professor and assistant professor could supervise. This regulation was adopted by DU and made into an ordinance in 2017.
As per the rule, a professor can supervise 8 PhD scholars, an associate professor can supervise 6 of them and assistant professor 4 of them.
Even in the department of modern Indian languages and literacy studies, 15 seats have been reduced from last year. Due to this, the department of Arabic will reduce the aspirant intake of 4 this year.
However, in 4 of the 53 courses, there has been growth in the intake, the highest for bio-chemistry at eight and 2 each for home science and political science.
Last year, there was a lag in MPhil and PhD admissions as DU had enforced the UGC rule making it mandatory for the aspirants to scoring 50% marks in the entrance exam. Due to this many had failed to certify.
