Direct PhD entry for grads in Engg, Architecture & Law

Engineering, Architecture and Law graduates can soon straight away enrol for doctorate programmes skipping the Masters, provided they clear the entrance examination and interview.

The University Grants Commission (UGC) is considering relaxing PhD admission rules for the students who have completed a four-year undergraduate programme in Engineering, Architecture and Law streams.

Students with four-year B Sc (research) degree would also be benefited with the changes in the PhD admission rules being brought about by the higher education regulator.

“The commission is in process of giving a final shape to the revised admission rules for M Phill and PhD,” official sources said.

At present, direct admission of B Tech students to PhD programs is permitted only in some of the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs). To get enrolled in PhD programmes offered by other higher education students, Engineering graduates are required to have a Masters degree.

For the Architecture and Law graduates also, a Masters degree is the minimum qualification for PhD programmes.

With the government gearing up to roll out four-year under-graduate integrated teacher education programme in science and humanities streams from next year, the UGC in the draft of the revised regulations has provided for exempting those to be completing the programme from minimum requirement of Masters degree for PhD.

“The candidates who have completed undergraduate courses of minimum four-years duration in Engineering, Science, Law, Architecture, Social Sciences, Humanities and others approved by the appropriate bodies,” the draft regulations for M Phill and PhD admissions, formulated by a committee of experts appointed by the UGC, stipulate.

For the students coming out of existing four-year under-graduate institutions, the draft regulations have prescribed a minimum credit threshold for PhD programmes which is “preferably equivalent to a conventional first-class.”

“All universities and institutions deemed to be universities shall admit MPhil And PhD students through a national entrance test or an entrance test conducted at the level of Individual university/institution,” it provides.