Good morning [%first_name |Dear Reader%],

If I’m being honest, it’s been a struggle to get through this week. Headlines from India and the US haven’t helped. Human rights feel paper thin against the tide of fundamentalism that seems to be everywhere.

Usually, we have self-appointed, often preachy, commentators when these sorts of things divide society. Custodians of history or sociology, or indeed science and maths, who can explain the big shifts we live through. I know intellectualism is more a bug than a feature in our current zeitgeist, but there’s no denying the fact that research and researchers have often breathed new life into stale ideas.

So I make a pitch, in edition #34 of Ed Set Go, for the PhD student. The scholar, the thinker, the researcher. The one who often annoys everyone at a party with all the ennui that comes from doing a six-year programme. 

But jokes apart, India grew its PhD admissions by an impressive 60% between 2012 and 2017, from 126,000 to over 200,000. PhDs are a requirement to teach in India’s universities and the number of PhDs in a university’s faculty gives it a better NIRF ranking. This is especially useful for newer universities trying to make a mark.

So PhDs are useful all around. Right?

Well, of late, a combination of Covid, the introduction of the new National Education Policy (NEP), and some hasty bureaucratic announcements have thrown PhD studies into a bit of tizzy.

The government wants more PhDs. But it also wants less PhDs. 

Confused? So am I.

Covid created a timeline lapse

In 2018, the University Grants Commission (UGC)—an all encompassing regulatory body for higher education in India—came up with a strict rule. By the 2021-22 academic session, all candidates applying for an assistant professor’s post would need a doctoral degree. A three-year transition period was given to those who were pursuing their PhDs.

Two things were happening in parallel:

1. The number of central universities was going up
2. Acute faculty shortages had hit older central universities in Delhi and Allahabad, among others. For instance, Delhi University had an almost 50% faculty shortage in 2018

This put unspeakable pressure on India’s higher education system, which is, till date, getting by through the appointment of ad-hoc teachers. (I’m speaking about government-funded institutions here, not private ones. Most PhDs, fittingly, come out of public institutions).

Cut to Covid, the destroyer of all timelines.

The UGC had to let go of its mandate on the recruitment of assistant professors and kick it down the line to 2023.