How Covid-19 lockdown put PhD dreams on hold, left aspirants in Mumbai struggling

For 34-year-old Akshay Raghavan (name changed), 2020 was the year “Dr” would be added as a prefix to his name. However, Covid-19 upended his dream. “The pandemic

For 34-year-old Akshay Raghavan (name changed), 2020 was the year “Dr” would be added as a prefix to his name. However, Covid-19 upended his dream. “The pandemic hit at a time when many PhD aspirants were ready to submit their final work to their respective universities. But lockdown was imposed, and that put an end to library/lab visits, fieldwork as well as basic internet facilities for many who got stuck in their hometowns,” said Raghavan, who is among the many aspirants who struggled to work on their PhD. After working on his thesis for more than four years, Raghavan had to wait till August to complete his fieldwork and add the finishing touches to his thesis. Now, he is waiting for his online viva appointment for the final submission, which will earn him his degree.

HT Image

While the 2020-21 academic calendar was reworked by the University Grants Commission (UGC), the pandemic has affected routine academic functions at universities and institutes across the country and institutions have struggled to provide students with appropriate facilities to complete their coursework. As students and higher education institutes grapple with the changes, among those reeling from the effects of the lockdown are PhD aspirants.

Challenges during lockdown

The lockdown put in place in end-March left several students in their hometowns and unable to return to the cities where they study. For many, working on their courses at home meant lack of proper e-learning resources; no access to science labs and/or libraries; poor internet facility, and other issues.

“For most of us, the only access to research material is the university library, which was shut down from March till August. Even though the University of Mumbai (MU) has access to online journals, students were not given remote access during the lockdown and all this ended up delaying the submission of our final theses,” said PhD student Mandar Panchal.

Many students were also affected by irregular disbursement of their fellowship funds. “Time and again we have taken up the matter of fellowship funds with MU authorities, but to no avail. In March, students staged a protest at MU’s Kalina campus and were assured by vice chancellor Suhas Pednekar of quick disbursement of fellowship funds. But six months later, students are still waiting,” said Shridhar Pendekar, a PhD candidate and member of the Chhatrabharati Student Organisation’s MU chapter.

Phased approach

In July, the management of the Indian Institute of Technology-Bombay (IIT-B) launched a “slow reboot plan” to restart research work in laboratories in a phased manner. As a first step, it asked around 128 PhD scholars and part-time Mumbai-based researchers if they were willing to resume their research or project work on campus. Between March and September, 169 defence examinations for PhD candidates were conducted and 138 theses were submitted for examination, said an IIT-B official.

At the Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS), the institute approached its academic council and governing body, seeking extension of academic sessions for PhD and MPhil candidates. “Once lockdown was imposed, we encouraged all Masters’ students who finished their exams to head home and encouraged our research students, especially the ones who were in the writing and submission stage of their research work, to stay back in hostels and access the library and internet facilities in order to complete their work,” said Surinder Jaswal, deputy director and dean, School of Research Methodology, TISS, Mumbai.

Online interviews

During the lockdown, TISS conducted an exercise of physical mapping of all their MPhil students to find out where exactly students were located. Online vivas were held for 196 out of their 200 MPhil students. Similarly, 70 PhD students defended their research projects in front of a team of external examiners and were awarded their doctorates during lockdown. “We annually manage to award around 35 PhDs every year, but this time round, double the number of degrees were awarded,” said Jaswal.

In May, MU announced the first PhD degree awarded to a student after she defended her PhD thesis online, before external examiners, during the lockdown. By the first week of October, MU had conducted online vivas for 62 students, including two MSc research projects.

“MU has a decentralised system in place where the research topics are approved by individual departments. Students therefore have been in constant touch with their mentors throughout the lockdown in order to continue work on their research. Since we had to keep the university campus shut for the first few months, some students found it difficult to work on their project. So we finally re-opened the library and some laboratories in August,” said a senior MU official.

Every year, MU approves approximately 1,000 research projects based on their synopses and awards around 200-250 PhD degrees. “Last year, we awarded 250 doctorates and we hope to award similar number of degrees, if not more, this year,” said an MU official.

Status of new PhD admissions

MU started inviting applications for the PhDs in March and received the highest number of applications since 2016 — 6,848 applications, including over 500 from students from other states. The total number of applications included 6,512 PhD students and 326 MPhil aspirants.

“Since the start of PhD entrance test (PET) in 2016, this is the highest number of applications received by the varsity. However, in the last couple of months, we’ve received requests from students asking us to re-open the applications process. Once we’ve cleared the status of applications, we will announce dates of the PET exam too,” said a spokesperson for MU.