PHD applicants double, but is MU equipped?

In addition to 4,304 who cleared exam this year, many from 2018 may apply; most profs at full capacity

MUMBAI: Nikesh Patil, 31, completed his masters in political science in 2018 and was all set to appear for the preliminary eligibility test (PET) in May 2020, but had to delay his plans by a year as the world was grappling with Covid-19. This year, he is one of the 11,000-odd candidates who appeared for the PET exam conducted by University of Mumbai (MU) for Doctor of Philosophy (PHD) and has managed to successfully clear the exam as well.

“Now that I’ve cleared the exam, I’m unsure if I’ll manage to pursue my PHD this year itself because most guides at the university are already managing a few students and cannot possibly take up more candidates,” said Patil, who now plans to continue working as a visiting faculty at various city colleges for another year before applying for PHD next year. The university considers PET results valid for three years, making it possible for people like Patil to pursue their dreams next or the year after that as well.

Before 2021, MU held its last PET exam in December 2018, and the number of applications made headlines with an almost 85% rise in PHD applicants. From 3,350 and 3,333 in 2016 and 2017 respectively, the varsity received 6,168 applications in 2018, which included maximum applications for the science and technology stream, followed by humanities and then the commerce and management stream.

After not being able to hold the exam due to various reasons in 2019 and due to Covid-19 pandemic in 2020, MU was expecting an even bigger turnout for the entrance exam this year. “In 2018 itself we witnessed a rise in applications because the exam was held after a break of almost 16 months. This year, PET was held after over two years, so we were not surprised to receive 11,351 applications for PHD alone,” said a senior official from the Mphil and PHD department of the university.

MU had originally planned to conduct PET in May 2020, for which registrations took place between February 27 and March 31 last year, but due to the national lockdown, MU could not conduct the exam. This year, registration began in January and was extended till March in order to accommodate students who cleared their postgraduate programmes in December 2020. The entrance exam was held between March 25 and 27.

“The number of applications is almost double because applicants from last year and this year have applied together. We were also very happy to see that almost 55% of the applications were from female candidates,” said the MU official.

Experts, however, feel that the rise in PHD applications will not materialise into rise in number of research scholars, due to the lack of appropriate number of guides across various departments of the varsity. At present, officials have confirmed that MU boasts of around 1,500 professors, associate professors as well as assistant professors who can work as guides with PHD as well as Mphil students. However, these guides are already working with enough number of students at present, making it impossible for them to mentor anymore.

“This year, maximum applications have come for chemistry department, where our teachers are already clearing a backlog of previous years’ research candidates. A professor is not allowed to mentor more than eight candidates at a time, and in our department, most professors are already working to the maximum capacity,” said an associate professor from the department of chemistry. She added that many students who could have completed their PHD by now were delayed due to the lockdown imposed last year.

To make matters worse, the university has decided to extend the validity of the December 2018 PET exam candidates till December 2022. “This means that apart from the 4,304 candidates who cleared the exam this year, we will also see more students from the 2018 batch who could not pursue their research projects last year due to the lockdown. The varsity is not equipped with enough staff to mentor so many students,” added the associate professor.

In 2020-21, the number of PHD and Mphil degrees awarded at the annual convocation ceremony dropped by over 63% compared to 2019-20. Many blamed the lockdown for the small number of doctorates awarded by the varsity this year.