Academics Discontent Over Credit Sharing With Co-Supervisors After Retirement

Many academicians seem unsatisfied with the UGC rules for sharing credits with co-supervisors after retirement. Per the UGC rules a PhD student has to change supervisor if the guide gets retired, irrespective of the thesis status.

Academicians have objected to the rules as this has led to the practice of denying the due credits to the main supervisor who has already put enormous efforts while guiding the scholar. They objected to the new supervisor getting greater credit in comparison to the contribution.

The UGC (Minimum Standard and Procedure for Award of PhD Degrees) Regulations 2022, debars the faculty members who have less than three years for retirement to take new research scholars for the supervision. However, faculty members can supervise PhD scholars who are already registered till retirement but not after attaining the age of 70 years. After retirement, the supervisor can become a co-supervisor of the PhD student.

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Indian institutions follow the practice of appointing a supervisor, joint supervisor, co-supervisor, and caretaker supervisor. The co-supervisor and caretaker supervisor are ad hoc arrangements. The supervisor gets full recognition while the joint supervisor gets half credit.

Academicians have objected to the provision of reducing the contribution of the main supervisor to a co-supervisor after the main work is done under him.

However, some state universities have modified the UGC rules for instance, Abdul Kalam Technical University (AKTU), UP has the same provision but made an additional condition that a supervisor substituted at a later should guide the candidate for at least two years.

IITs do not follow the procedure as in IIT Madras, the faculty member who has guided a candidate for at least three years will continue to be a guide even after the retirement.

In IIT Bomby if a PhD scholar complete 80% of research under a supervisor the latter continues to be the primary supervisor and the co-supervisor will do only administrative purpose.