One major weakness of many of the private or newly born/converted universities/NITs is that they do not have even the minimum number of Ph.D. qualified teachers because of non-availability, despite re-
Table 3. JPI Computing Table
Sr. No. Title of the Paper with details of (i) Journal Name: (ii)Vol., Page
No.:
Year of
publication No. of Authors (including self)
IF or PIF of the journal (on the year of
publication)
IFS earned
1 2 3 . . . NORMS:
1. Journal Publications in JPI Computing Table are to be furnished in ascending chronological order starting from the very first publication and then in chronological increasing order according to the date of publication of each paper. The last published paper will be the bottom most entry here. Only those publications which are in indexed and sub-indexed journals are to be recorded. Publications in non- indexed journals are not to be recorded in this table.
2. Date of Search (on which data are filled-up by the researcher):
3. LRY on this date of search =
4. All the data in this JPI Table are to be filled-up correctly by the researcher on the date of search.
5. JPI values (to be calculated from the JPI table): CJPI = xxx, AJPI = xxx.
6. Year-wise all YJPI in the format like: (YJPI,Year), till this date on which data are filled-up by the researcher starting from his first year of research which is assumed in the Theory of IRE to be the year of getting his Master degree, separated by comas. For example, if the very first year of a researcher is 2005, then he is to record here all YJPI like: (1.02, 2005), (0.52, 2006), (0.61, 2007), ……. etc.:
7. a(S) = 8. SA =
“Theory of IRE with (α,β,γ) Norm”
peated advertisement in newspapers or because of low salary structure or because of some other reasons.
Even if they have Ph.D. qualified teachers, it can be observed that most of these Ph.D. holders do not possesses good quality Ph.D. Most of them do not know how to guide Ph.D. scholars because they too did not receive proper guidance from their respective own supervisors during their respective period of pursuing Ph.D. Thus the situation is a kind of “error propagation” to the next generation from the present generation receiving from the elder generation. But any university, even be weak or of very poor quality, is free to admit Ph.D. scholars, sometimes in a large quantity too, and sometimes with high admission fees. Consequently, it is strongly felt that there must be a kind of real-time yardstick to be effective from the very first day of each Ph.D. scholar after registration (admission) which all the Ph.D. scholars as well as the supervisors and the university officers must be aware of, in order to ensure a minimum qual- ity in the new generation of Ph.D.’s across all the universities in the country in order to bring at least a minimum prescribed amount of quality in every Ph.D.’s. It is missing in the existing UGC norms. Time has now come to understand that production of poor Ph.D.’s will have both direct and indirect serious consequences to the country’s academic standard and in particular to the quality of future generation teachers upon whom the country will be dependent(!). If teachers are regarded to be the backbone of a country (as said in India), then is it not a very serious type of “error propagation” (forward chain pollu- tion) to the future academicians and hence to the overall growth of the country concerned? This error propagation is never visible directly. It is like a very slow poisoning, by damaging silently in a hidden way the future growth of the country. In every country, it is the teachers who produce doctors for the future, engineers for the future, teachers for the future, scientists for the future, lawyer for the future, ….., etc. The “error propagation” (forward chain pollution) penetrating into the stages of a beginner/learner from primary schools to universities is surely a kind of slow-poison to India’s future health at every real field. Today apparently we may feel that there is no threat for we Indians in our economic growth. But in case these errors are not properly identified and eradicated at real time, it could be too costly to India in the year 2020 onwards to give smile to the world as a superpower. Repair of damage if identified late will be surely very costly to India.
The main objective of this chapter is to introduce an excellent HEM System & Policy Administration for the universities in India (in particular, for the private universities, newly born/converted universities/
NITs, poorly graded Govt. universities of India). We begin with the first problem (Problem-1) of the seven major problems of MHRD in HEM identified earlier in this article. For this we need to develop a very rich structured method which can help the Ph.D. supervisors to monitor very transparently the time-to-time progress of the research work being carried out by their Ph.D. scholars, and which can ensure the concerned universities about a precise and quantified amount of excellence in the qualities of the degrees to be conferred. The method can ensure the quality of research work and publications of a Ph.D. scholar, can provide a simple way for making self-assessment by a research scholar himself about his performance and progress time-to-time, and can also provide a simple way to understand whether the work done so far is sufficient enough in terms of quality and quantity for submission of the thesis.
The method can easily help the Guides/Supervisors to keep complete control over the performance of research scholars with time during the tenure of guidance by a mercury guided thermometer. The exist- ing rules/norms/methods of UGC to monitor real-time progress of Ph.D. work of a regular Ph.D. scholar in a university are not rich enough logically or scientifically, rather very much imprecise and hence not fruitful. There is no method/norms/rules presently existing with UGC to monitor the universities/institu- tions on the proper assessment about the exact phase of actual completion of research work of a Ph.D.
scholar which is suitable for submission as a Ph.D. thesis as a partial fulfillment for the award of Ph.D.
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degree. There is no minimum standard precisely prescribed or formulated and well documented by UGC by which a Ph.D. scholar can understand by self-assessment that his work is (is not) sufficient enough for submission now in the form of a thesis. Sometimes, due to non-availability of a well-constructed norms, a honest Ph.D. scholars too depends upon the following two parameters by mistake:
(i) Volume of work done so far and (ii) How many years of Ph.D. tenure are completed so far.
Even it is fact that in many cases, dishonest or poor performer Ph.D. scholars try to exploit these two parameters as their important eligibility criteria to submit their thesis.
In this section a very useful and consolidated method called by “Five Conditions Ph.D. Rule of UGC” has been introduced which are to be fulfilled by a research scholar as mandatory requirements for submission of his thesis for which the supervisor is the all in all to check/verify all the five constituent conditions individually and finally to validate the eligibility for submission. The author is quite sure that by adopting this proposed “Five Conditions Ph.D. Rule of UGC”, the “Ministry of HRD (MHRD)” or the universities can well ensure a minimum standard on the research work carried out by the Ph.D. scholars time-to-time, in particular prior to submission of the thesis, and thus MHRD can achieve a huge amount of homogeneity among the qualities of the Ph.D. degrees conferred by different universities across the country. Out of the five conditions, the first four conditions are to be fulfilled by the Ph.D. scholars (and to be verified by the supervisors) and the 5th condition is to be fulfilled by the concerned universities.
In fact, there is no such model exists in UGC or in the “Ministry of HRD (MHRD)” or in the University Guidelines which can help the Ph.D. scholars themselves to measure and keep record continuously and thus to self-assess his research progress with time, which can help the Guides/Supervisors (and hence the concerned universities) to self-assess the minimum standard of a Ph.D. thesis to estimate whether it is eligible for submission. It is also fact that although India is having a large number of universities, Engineering Institutions, Medical Institutions, Management Institutions, Law Institutions, etc., but in reality many of them are starving due to acute shortage of quality Guides/Supervisors for Ph.D. guid- ance, although there could be a number of long experienced Ph.D. teachers and Professors guiding the scholars. Nevertheless, our proposed model of “Five Conditions Ph.D. Rule of UGC” can standardize the higher education in India up to an excellent limit, can bring a homogeneity in the quality of the future Ph.D.’s across the country up to an amount of very high extent, can ensure the quality of all the future Ph.D.’s to be higher than a minimum quantified prescribed level, in particular while private universities/
institutions or newly born/converted universities/NITs or poorly graded Govt. universities are concerned in our country. The proposed “Five Conditions Ph.D. Rule of UGC” method is not only applicable to the Ph.D. scholars but can well be extended to the BS/B.Tech., MS, M.Sc., MBA, M.Pharm, M.Phil. or M.Tech. or any Master Programme too, where there is an amount of research work required for partial fulfillment of the degree.
A Ph.D. programme gives a chance to push the frontiers of human knowledge. Unfortunately, this prestigious and important degree has fallen prey to commercialism too. It is just because of the fact that a quantified excellent model of a real-time yardstick not prescribed by the “Ministry of HRD (MHRD)”
or by the universities to measure time-to-time the quality of research work being done by the Ph.D.
scholars in their universities. It is extremely shocking fact that this weakness of MHRD/UGC is being exploited by many research scholars, even by many supervisors/guides, by many thesis evaluators, by many thesis reviewers and hence sometimes by the concerned universities too, ultimately. This has been
“Theory of IRE with (α,β,γ) Norm”
causing a huge damage to the Ph.D. quality in India in a very hidden and silent way, in a very untrace- able way and like a slow poisoning to the country.
A researcher (be it a Ph.D. scholar or a teacher or a scientist) should certainly agree with the phi- losophy that he/she has grown and reached today this level of height in the academic society with his own subject, and hence it is his moral responsibility that by way of his research work the same subject should also grow and get further height up to some extent. And only then a ‘subject’ too will remember the Ph.D. scholars or researchers forever.
Ph.D. Degree by Quality of Research (Not by Publications)
A basic question quite naturally arises: “why publications are required to get a Ph.D. degree?”. Yes, publications should not be mandatory for submission of Ph.D. thesis in a top class university, only a high class of research work is required to enhance the subject sphere by a reasonable amount which au- tomatically will lead to Ph.D. degree. Truly speaking, there are a number of Nobel Prize winners whose Ph.D. thesis did not have any publications. But in our theory here we have to ignore such very special cases for the sake of safe-side to maintain our quality which is surely at serious stake presently in India.
In this work we solve all the above cited issues by proposing few real-time dynamic yardstick models which can be well imposed in the universities (in particular in the private universities or in newly born/
converted universities/NITs) by the “Ministry of HRD (MHRD)”, initially for about ten years at least, and slowly may be revoked thereafter once a stable standard is achieved, however on ‘case to case’ basis.
We do also want to say that quality or a minimum quality can be just retained by imposing yardsticks, but true excellence of any university must come from the inside of its heart without carrying any imposed yardstick from the side of UGC or MHRD.
Before presenting the “Five Conditions Ph.D. Rule of UGC”, we introduce few very useful new indices.
“Ph.D. Work Index” (PWI) of a Ph.D. Scholar
The Ph.D. Work Index (PWI) is a finite non-negative real number possessed by each Ph.D. research scholar at a given point of time during his tenure of Ph.D. work in his university/institute where he is enrolled. It is an important measure to ensure the real-time progress of Ph.D. scholar with quality re- search work being carried out. If one researcher is not a Ph.D. scholar, for him the notion of PWI is an invalid quantity, because of the fact that this measure is constructed and introduced here for the Ph.D.
scholars only, not for other researchers.
At a given point of time during the tenure of Ph.D. research work of a Ph.D. scholar, PWI is the sum of all IFS the scholar has earned during his Ph.D. tenure so far, but subject to the condition that the work is in compliance with his Ph.D. Proposal which was officially approved for him by the university DC/
BRS or appropriate committee. The PWI of a research scholar excludes all IFS earned (if any) by the scholar prior to his admission into the Ph.D. programme. It does also exclude all IFS earned by the pub- lications which are not relevant to his approved Ph.D. Proposal, even if such work been done during his Ph.D. tenure. The PWI at any given time during the tenure of Ph.D. work, if required by the university, must be initially certified by the supervisor which is to be finally approved by university through the Doctoral Committee (DC) meeting of the concerned department and Board of Research Studies (BRS) of the concerned Faculty of the university.
“Theory of IRE with (α,β,γ) Norm”
It is therefore obvious that at the time of admission in a Ph.D. programme, the PWI of any research scholar is 0, although his CJPI could be a positive number (because, prior to Ph.D. admission he may have done few good publications). After that, the PWI improves with time on the basis of his progress in research work and publications in indexed or sub-indexed journals. It is a non-decreasing quantity with respect to time.
For any Ph.D. scholar, if we draw his “PWI - t” graph which is a graph of ‘PWI’ against the inde- pendent variable ‘time t”, then we can see that it is a continuous non-decreasing step-up graph with
d
dt (PWI) ≥ 0 at every point of time.
For a talent Ph.D. scholar with good research progress, the number of steps will be more in the “PWI - t” graph. For an excellent research progress of the Ph.D. scholar, there will be one more observation that few of the step-heights will be usually large in the graph.
The metric PWI has a major significance to an enrolled Ph.D. scholar, to his Supervisor/Guide, and of course to the concerned university/institute. The quantity PWI at every point of time helps a research scholar to do self-assessment of his progress of quality work at real time consideration.
Difference between PWI and CJPI
The notion of PWI is different from the notion of CJPI. Where the CJPI exists for every researcher, the PWI exist only for those researchers who are at this time the Ph.D. scholars on enrolment in the univer- sity. Thus, it is obvious that CJPI of a Ph.D. scholar is always greater than or equal to the PWI of him.
The PWI of a Ph.D. scholar attains its final value once he/she submits his thesis. After that the PWI of a Ph.D. scholar can never vary, can neither increase nor decrease, and rather it freezes to an absolute value for lifetime of the scholar as a good personal record. But this is not true in case of the metric CJPI. The CJPI of a researcher gets updated (at least not decreasing) throughout his life.
“Thesis Submission Index (TSI) of a Department” in a University/Institution The ‘Thesis Submission Index’ (TSI) is a measure prescribed by a university in its Ph.D. Bye-laws, which could be different for different academic departments (core subjects) of it. For example, in a given university the TSI of the Department of Physics may be different from the TSI of the Department of Computer Science of it. It is due to the fact that in some fields the IF (PIF) of the indexed or sub-indexed journals are usually low and in some fields the IF (PIF) of the indexed or sub-indexed journals are usu- ally high. It is not because of the fault of the scholar or of department or of the university but mainly because of the reason that in some core areas number of indexed or sub-indexed journals are more and in some core areas number of indexed or sub-indexed journals are less, (considering mathematically per 100 scholars). However, given a department in a university, TSI is fixed for it i.e. does not vary on the basis of the nature of the area of research or topics of interest in that subject. For example, in the Department of Mathematics the TSI will remain fixed whatever be the area of research, be it “Complex Analysis” or “Optimization Techniques” or “Algebra” or “Fluid Mechanics”, etc. TSI is a positive real
“Theory of IRE with (α,β,γ) Norm”
number decided/fixed by the university for a department of it, but different TSI values are for different departments.
A Ph.D. scholar is eligible to submit his thesis if and only if
1. The PWI of the scholar exceeds the prescribed TSI value of the department (prescribed by its university), and also if
2. The supervisor allows him to submit the thesis, in compliance with the approved “Ph.D. Proposal”.
Otherwise the scholar has to do more amount of good research work in order to raise his PWI value to exceed the TSI value of his department in his university (or, at least to become equal). Under no circumstances, a Ph.D. scholar is allowed to submit his thesis if PWI < TSI. If PWI of a scholar is not sufficient enough, his guide/supervisor should not and cannot allow him to submit the thesis.
The guide/supervisor has the full discretion power ‘not to allow’ his scholar to submit his thesis even if PWI of the scholar exceeds the TSI value of the department in the university. The Fulfillment of the condition PWI < TSI does not necessarily mean that the “Ph.D. Proposal” is solved completely and satisfactorily. It is the guide who will finally decide whether further amount of research work is required or not, for making complete solution to the concerned Ph.D. proposal. The guide is the all in all to decide about the submission of thesis, but once the inequality PWI ≥ TSI be satisfied, not earlier.
“Subject-Wise Minimum Value of TSI” Prescribed by UGC (a Minimum Requirement for All the Universities/Institutions)
Although a university itself prescribe its own TSI value (different for different core subject), but it does not mean that the university has the freedom/right to choose low or poor values. In order to attain at least a minimum amount of homogeneity in the Ph.D. degrees in all universities in the country, the UGC will prescribe a “Minimum Value of TSI” department-wise (i.e. subject wise) which is applicable across all the universities and across the country. However, a university at its own discretion may prescribe a higher value of TSI for its own in the bye-laws. Every year in January, UGC will prescribe “Minimum Value of TSI” for each core subject (i.e. for each department) for all the Universities/institutions across the country. The minimum value of TSA (subject wise) is prescribed by UGC. And UGC does also allow the universities to fix their own values, subject to the condition that for a given department the university prescribed TSI values must not be less than the corresponding minimum TSI values prescribed by UGC for the same department in all the universities across the country.
However, a university (in particular the excellent universities) is free to fix TSI value for its depart- ments much higher than the minimum values prescribed by UGC in order to maintain a very high qual- ity Ph.D. But a top class Professor (Supervisor) may have his own personal TSI value for his subject, but subject to the condition that under no circumstances it can be less than the University TSI value prescribed for his department (core subject). Any TSI value chosen personally by a Supervisor (by his own intellectual choice) for applying to his scholars will be invalid if it is less than the value of the TSI of his department, prescribed by his university. In case a Professor (supervisor) is having his own valid TSI, he/she may apply his own TSI instead of his department’s TSI while taking decision about allow- ing a scholar of him to submit the Ph.D. thesis to the university. Even a Professor may apply different