JNU administration has drastically cut intake into the university for the next academic session and perhaps for years to come, using the UGC ‘caps’ on research as a pretext. JNU Teachers’ Association demonstrates conclusively here through a survey of 46 Central Universities, that barring a handful which have definitively adopted them, most others are still operating with other Regulations based on the preceding 2009 version. And even the few universities that have adopted them, barring JNU, have implemented modifications by way of harmonisation with the statutes, objects, and past practices of the institutions.
JNU not being targeted using the UGC Regulations as a pretext? Right.
Over the past few weeks we have been told that the mandatory nature of the UGC Regulations require them to be implemented by universities immediately and in a chapter-and- verse fashion. JNUTA’s survey of 46 Central Universities however shows that barring a handful who have definitively adopted them, most others are still operating with other Regulations based on the preceding 2009 version. And for even the few universities that have adopted them, barring JNU, modifications in the way of harmonisation with the statutes, objects, and past practices of the institution have inevitably resulted.
Table 1 presents the facts of 46 Central Universities, the year of their founding, and the research programmes they take admission to. To determine whether they had adopted the 2016 UGC Regulations, we examined the Ordinances and notifications on the university website in order to detect its adoption. (The value label unclear is to mark the cases where no explicit information of either type was posted on the university’s website.)
Taking just a few crucial parameters, we find that amongst those universities who have adopted the UGC Regulations 2016, each one of them barring JNU has tried to harmonise them with past practices, standards of fairness of examination and good research.
In fact, the University of Hyderabad, which has more or less a chapter and verse interpretation of the Regulations has decided through its Academic Council, not to reduce intake and has asked the UGC for clarifications.
It is JNU’s tragedy that we have an administration that refuses to stand up for the university in any fora, that refuses to hold an Academic Council meeting, and has implemented a completely unwarranted cull of seats for admissions and the adoption of crippling and illegal eligibility conditions for applications to various programmes, particularly in the science schools. UGC Regulations are being used merely as a pretext to cripple the research programmes of JNU.
See the post on JNUTA’s website.
Courtesy: Kafila.online