UGC 2018: Rolling Back! This big decision by the Commission will benefit PhD and MPhil students; know what it is

The University Grants Commission has taken the big decision for the research students on Thursday, i.e. 24th May 2018 that will surely give them a sigh of relief after knowing about it. UGC has rolled back its previous rule for taking the admission to the Ph.D and M.Phil programmes. Yes, the Commission has scrapped the existing norms of 100% weight of oral, interviews, or viva voce, which was a single criterion for taking admission to PhD and M.Phil courses. Now, the selection of candidates will be based on the written examination.

According to the reports, the Commission has implemented the UGC (Minimum Standards and Procedure for Award of M.Phil/ PhD Degree) Regulations 2016. Under this amendment, candidates have to score the 70% in the written test while 30% in the oral test for getting selected in the course.

Besides, this big change, UGC has also given the 5% points relaxation in the minimum marks to be scored by the reserved categories (SC/ST) and OBC in the written examination. While the candidates who belonged to General category will have to secure at 50% marks in the entrance examination to qualify for the interview or viva voce.

However, the Commission has also approved the regulations for online courses by universities. With this another big decision, now Universities/colleges/institutions can also offer the various graduate, post graduate and diploma courses online. The information was shared by Union HRD Minister Prakash Javadekar on Twitter.

Here’s what he said:

‘In a landmark reform in the field of higher education, University Grants Commission has approved the UGC (Online Courses) Regulations. There were no such regulations earlier.’