While at the Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), teachers and students are protesting against the seat cut in MPhil and PhD programmes, at Delhi University there seems to be a problem of plenty. For the MPhil programme in different departments of DU, the number of students taken is fixed at 25, even when the number of teachers appointed to the department has increased.
With the number of students fixed, close to half of the faculty strength in the different departments is without students to supervise, several teachers say. While in most centres at JNU, barring Sanskrit Studies, Physical Sciences and Computer and Integrated Science, each teacher has at least has one student to mentor.
At JNU, students and teachers are protesting against this because after capping the number of scholars a teacher can supervise, several departments will not be able to admit fresh students in the upcoming academic session.
The notification by the University Grants Commission states that a professor can supervise three students, an associate professor can mentor two, and an assistant professor can guide only one.
At the DU’s History department, there are 16 professors, 13 associate professors and 12 assistant professors. If the notification is followed, the department can have a total of 86 students, as against the 25 admitted at present.
Similarly, in the department of Political Science, there are 14 professors and five assistant professors. The department can admit up to 47 MPhil students.
In the Hindi department, there are 12 professors, nine associates and one assistant professor. The department could admit 91 students. Even in the Sanskrit department there are 13 professors, nine associates and two assistant professors. The department can admit 98 students.
Only the English department deviates from this norm. In 2010 , it changed the ordinance and increased the MPhil seats from 25 to 41.
“The university is yet to adopt the new UGC regulation in the matter. Once this is placed before the academic and executive council, a decision will be taken,” said a senior DU official.
However, teachers say that the university should have amended the ordinance after the expansion following OBC reservation in 2007.
“We had approached the then vice-chancellors many times. In August 2014, we also sent copies of our representation to the UGC and the MHRD. Following this, there was a letter sent to all the departments for the number of seats before OBC and after expansion. But nothing happened after that. Logically, if the number of teachers is increasing the number of students should also have increased,” said Hany Babu, English professor at the university.