Osmania University short of eligible faculty, researches seek PhD guide

However, the university has no idea of how many PhD vacancies exist. Another major issue is the lack of enough faculty who are eligible to guide students for PhD. About 50 per cent of the 550 university’s faculty is ineligible to guide research scholars; for the rest, UGC says one guide can have only eight scholars. About 50 professors are going to retire next year which makes the situation even tighter. While professors can guide research scholars even after retirement, not many offer to guide scholars as it is optional. Even if they do, the research scholars are affected because they do not get the same amount of time and attention.

In some departments the situation is such that there are not more than one or two faculty members to guide research scholars. The archaeology department has 24 PhD applications but there is just one assistant professor with eight scholars. Sheikh Nazir, who has cleared the PhD eligibility test and aims to do PhD from the geoinformatics department, said, “The university should immediately take steps to display department wise vacancies. Many students are pursuing PhD for more than five years even though it is not allowed.”