Do marginalised candidates get a raw deal in PhD admissions?

Data obtained through RTI shows reserved seats in PhD are not always filled and central universities’ record with PwD seats is especially dismal

- Shradha Chettri

While better than the premier technical and management institutions, central universities, too, have significant chunks of seats allotted for historically-marginalised communities going vacant each year. An analysis of data obtained through a Right to Information (RTI) application shows that in some departments, for certain categories, admissions could be less than half of the seats available.

Activists have revealed the swathes of reserved PhD seats and teaching posts left unfilled at top-tier institutions, such as the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) and Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs). Central universities have done better but the problem extends to them as well. Plus, the extent of reserved category admissions varies widely with the department and discipline, as the data shows.

Central policy requires 15% seats at all levels to be reserved for Scheduled Castes, 7.5% for Scheduled Tribes, 27% for Other Backward Classes and 5% for persons with disabilities. The vacancy rates at the PhD level have implications for recruitment of SC, ST, OBC faculty members in the future. Others, if they have responded at all, chose to stay mum on the number of seats filled against the number sanctioned.

Of over one dozen universities from which Careers360 sought data, four furnished it in a format that allowed analysis. Central Universities of Gujarat and Haryana, University of Delhi, and Banaras Hindu University supplied institute and/or department-wise data on the Phd seats sanctioned and filled over five academic sessions.

The data also show that over the years, the number of students opting for PhD has been rising. On the other side of it, academics point out another trend that even though students from reserved category are completing their PhD's, during recruitment they are constantly being declared Not Found Suitable (NFS).