UGC’s new rules will plunge students into PhDs with no research experience, say wary academics

New Delhi: Academicians are wary of the University Grants Commission (UGC)'s latest regulation which says that students who have completed a four-year undergraduate course can now directly pursue a doctoral degree. Academics say these students will have no research experience and will be lost in the first few years of their study. The UGC, earlier this week, notified significant modifications to the PhD programme, including in the qualification for admissions and evaluation procedures. Another argument raised by academicians was that the implementation of the four-year undergraduate programme, as devised under the National Education Policy (NEP), has not been brought into…