New Delhi: The PhD and MPhil students have claimed that the UGC's decision of extending the deadline to submit the thesis is not sufficient. Since the emerge of the Covid-19 pandemic, the University Grants Commission (UGC) has been extending the thesis submission deadline for MPhil and PhD students.
While the UGC claims that this move is implemented to assist students in their PhD and MPhil courses and take stress off, the scholars and researchers claim otherwise.
Recently, the Indian National Young Academy of Sciences (INYAS) in their report claimed that the significant concerns that are lingering in the minds of research scholars include discontinuity of the lab works, fellowship disruption, and pending experimental work for the manuscripts.
The researchers didn't have access to the Labs or had limited access for the longest duration of time due to the pandemic. According to the latest reports, Experiments that are important to address all the objectives of their thesis or the revisions asked by the reviewers have all been running late.
Some of the researchers have submitted incomplete thesis whereas majority of them are of the opinion that pandemic affected their post-PhD plans.
Although the extensions can be of great help, a large number of research scholars believe that it's in fact the fund crunch which has affected the most problems for researchers with 42.8% researchers claiming that fund crunch as the primary issue.
Among those who received funds, 14.6 percent got funds partially, and 28.2 percent claimed they did not receive funds at all during the pandemic, the report said.
One of the research scholars at IIT-Delhi, said that the biggest loss for research scholars was that of lack of exposure. Scholars used to travel to other countries for international conferences and research before covid/pandemic and interact with foreign researchers in the same subject to gain exposure, however, owing to the pandemic, that part is absent.
Further, the pandemic caused a delay resulting in a lengthier time for a researcher to earn their PhD degree, the scholars are getting funds or fellowships for five years tenure, as they were previously. However, the government should consider extending the fellowship, as it will undoubtedly assist scholars in conducting research without stress, he said.
With the current deadline, the Universities and higher educational institutions (HEI) have the opportunity to give another extension of up to six months beyond June 30, for M.Phil or Ph.D thesis submission on case-to-case basis after reviewing a student’s work by the Research Advisory Committee and on recommendation of the supervisor and head of department.
Earlier, the first extension was granted in June 2022, and this went on for every six months due to prevailing the COVID-19 situation across the country.
Recently, the University Grants Commission (UGC) has reached out to almost 500 foreign universities across the US, UK, Europe and East Asia to increase collaborations between Indian and foreign universities.
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