'General' students fail to make the cut for media course at Jamia
Chinki Sinha
Posted online: Wednesday, Mar 24, 2010 at 0059 hrs
New Delhi : More than two-thirds of students at the Jamia Millia
Islamia's PhD program at the AJK Mass Communication Research Centre
belong to the SC/ST category. The reason - the general category
students failed to make the cut. Barring one, most applicants in the
category did not get the minimum qualifying marks — 50 per cent in two
sets of papers — in the entrance examinations, according the
university officials.
So, in the non-exempted group, six out of eight students are in the
SC/ST category. One of them, a former student qualified for the Jamia
quota.
While the University Grants Commission (UGC) has repeatedly tried to
encourage filling up of reserved quotas for Scheduled Caste and
Scheduled Tribe (SC/ST) students in universities, a section of
students in Jamia Millia Islamia allege they have a problem quite the
opposite: too many SC/ST candidates and very few in the general
category.
The university, on the other hand, says applicants from the general
category did not make the cut, and the quality of applications was not
good enough to draw more than 16 candidates as against the advertised
number of seats at 56.
There are three other general category students in the exempted list —
applicants who already have M.Phil degrees or have passed National
(NET) or State Eligibility Test (SET) are not required to take the
entrance examinations made mandatory by the UGC last year to improve
the quality of the PhD students. Outraged students, however,
criticised the university's selection criteria. They claimed though
the university advertised 56 seats in the PhD programme, the centre
has taken in only 16 students.
The university, which set up a team of senior professors to look into
the allegations, refuted the charges. According to Jamia, it was
fulfilling the constitutional mandate by giving admissions to SC/ST
applicants, who get a relaxation in the minimum qualifying marks for
admissions.
The inquiry committee spent close to three hours checking the lists
and matching them with the criteria and found nothing amiss, said
university officials.
According to officials, only those general category applicants who
made the cut, or got the qualifying marks, were offered admission.
"By constitutional mandate, we are required to give seats to SC/ST
candidates. SC/ST students met the criteria," Jamia Registrar Prof S M
Sajid told Newsline. "Only one student from the general category got
50 per cent."
Last May, the UGC made entrance exams mandatory for PhD applicants
after the Mungekar Committee report highlighted malpractices in the
process of getting PhD degrees, and how the quality of students in PhD
programmes across universities was poor.
Now, besides an entrance exam, students will also have to face an
interview where they will be required to discuss their research area.
While central universities had set basic standards for PhD aspirants,
many state and deemed universities had no such standards.
Prof Sajid said Jamia wanted to use the entrance examinations to
ensure quality. "If only 16 students could make it, it wasn't a case
of favoritism or bias," he said. "It was an instance of only the
deserving candidates making it to the programme."
For SC and ST candidates, for whom a reservation of 15 and 7.5 per
cent respectively exists, there is also a relaxation in the minimum
qualifying marks for admissions. So, nine SC/ST candidates were able
to get in the programme, Prof Sajid said.
But the university said its system erred in assigning quotas to
candidates and when candidates presented documents supporting their
claims of being an SC/ST student — or a former Jamia student as in the
case of Amit Chawla — the mistake was rectified. At least in three
instances the students' names appeared in the list of those who
appeared in the examinations under the general category, while their
names appeared in SC/ST category in the final list.
Again, in the case of one student (Dilip Kumar) whose name appeared in
the general category in the initial list, in the final selection list
the name appeared with students who were exempted from taking the
entrance examination. In the fifth instance of such a system error, a
general category student's name was moved to the Jamia reservation
quota in the final selection list.
The lists are all on the university's web site:www.jmi.nic.in. Prof
Sajid said: "We are working on it. It's our first year and we are
trying to fill in the loopholes."
The admission debate
* Students says Jamia advertised for 56 seats in PhD programme at
Jamia's AJK Mass Communication Research Centre
* University enrolled 16
* 8 exempted from taking entrance exams: 5 SC/ST candidates made the cut
* 8 others took entrance exam: 7 SC/ST candidates admitted
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