Varsity cites staff crunch; Students say VC deliberately preventing admission
English and Foreign Languages University (Photo: EFLU official Website screenshot)
Hyderabad: Fresh controversy has erupted at the English and Foreign Languages University over admissions of four students, who had been selected for the Department of Social Exclusion Studies for PhD, being deferred owing to reasons like shortage of faculty.
The administration states that the head of the department is currently teaching at the University of Hyderabad as well. Students, however, blame the Vice-Chancellor for finding excuses to prevent them from being admitted since the students selected for the Social Exclusion Studies department can cause problems owing to their strong ideologies and opinions.
As per the University ordinance, a professor can supervise eight PhD students and five MPhil students. A student can choose his or her guide from the same department, from any other department in the same school or from any other department from other schools within the university.
“The School for Interdisciplinary Studies called for applications for the department. Four seats have been allocated. The notification was issued in December 2013 and exams were held in February 2014. Over 50 people wrote the exam, 30 got selected, 26 attended the interview and four had to be shortlisted. The results announced in May 2014, had the names of the selected candidates from all the departments of all schools, except for the Department of Social Exclusion Studies.
The names of the selected candidates were missing,” an aspiring student said. He added, “Moreover, the results were announced on Facebook and not on the official website of the University. A social networking website can definitely be a media for disbursing information, but not when it is about notifications or results.”
Another agitated aspirant said, “As per another regulation for central universities, the VC does not have discretionary powers to scrap admissions. The students in this department are studying and working on the annihilation of caste and more, and this department will change the way India looks at caste or marginalised communities.”
The Department of Social Exclusion Studies was started at the University six years ago and deals with subjects like gender, caste, neglected and marginalised communities and SCs/STs, among others.
Dr U.J. Suresh, controller of examinations, said, “We didn’t want to admit them without a proper idea about how they would be assigned to a guide. And moreover, the head of the department was on leave.”
( Source : dc correspondent )
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