UGC revises rules for PhD admission, 40% seats to be filled in entrance test apart from NET/JRF

New test to be conducted by universities/colleges to complement NET/JRF. Policy document lays out syllabus, qualifying marks, guidelines for areas of research, supervisors’ duties.

New Delhi: The University Grants Commission (UGC) has revised the rules for admission to PhD programmes by including an entrance test for admission, apart from qualification through the existing National Eligibility Test (NET), ThePrint has learnt. The idea is to “reorient” PhD programmes across the country, officials said.

NET/JRF (Junior Research Fellowship), conducted by the National Testing Agency (NTA), is the exam that tests a student’s eligibility to enrol for a PhD in Indian universities. But now, 60 per cent of the total seats of the academic year for a PhD programme shall be filled by NET/JRF qualified students. The remaining 40 per cent shall be filled through the university/common entrance test.

The draft of the revised regulations - ‘UGC (Minimum Standards and Procedure for Award of Ph.D. Degree) Regulations, 2022’ - was approved in a commission meeting held on 10 March, UGC chairman M. Jagadesh Kumar confirmed to ThePrint. The document has been accessed by ThePrint.

The rules will soon be put on the official UGC website and made public. Based on the public feedback, the commission will finalise the regulations and send it to the Union Ministry of Education for approval.

For those who have qualified through NET/JRF, the selection will be based on interview/viva-voce.

For candidates who have passed the entrance test, the selection shall be evaluated in the ratio 70 (written test) to 30 (interview).

“Merit list for both shall be separately published. In case of unfilled seats in either of the categories, candidates from other categories can be requisitioned to fill up the vacant slots,” reads the policy document.