Only 3% PET-II result, lowest in 7 years

NAGPUR: Just 3% out of the 2,041 candidates have cleared the second and final exam for pursuing doctorate of philosophy (PhD) from Nagpur Univesity (NU) this time.
The result for Phd entrance test-II (PET-II), announced on February 26, is the lowest in the last seven years.

PET-II was held on February 2 and 279 students who had cleared PET-I had appeared for it. Of this, just 63 were declared pass by NU. The first was objective-type exam was followed by subject-specific descriptive PET-II.

The final number after PhD registrations starting from April 2 is likely to further go down.

NU has attributed the low figures to stringent norms implemented this time. However, researchers and guides have accused it of “discouraging” research activities by not heeding to their pleas.

This batch also had to bear the brunt of increased negative marking in PET-I. Just 280 candidates out of 2,041 had cleared PET-I. The numbers had drastically slipped from nearly 700 in 2014.

Soon after PET-I, NU had amended the passing score to 45% for reserved category students who are also eligible for PET-II. Before the PET-I result, pro-VC Pramod Yeole had claimed that the new norms and procedure for pursuing PhD were “perfect”.

As per the new direction, the sole criteria to qualify for PET-II was 50% score in PET-I and no relaxation was given.

In 2014, out of 3,962 appearing candidates, 692 had passed. The number of passing candidates was nearly the same in the following year when 3,224 appeared and 647 passed PET-I. In 2016, out of 3771, 370 cleared the exam.

This year, several blunders such as wrong questions in PET-I and wrong grouping of students marred the entire PET process.

TOI has been consistently highlighting how the new direction affected hundreds of PhD aspirants. On December 26, TOI had reported that the new direction was silent on PET validity of those aspirants who cleared the exam between 2013 and 2015. The batch of 2012 had moved the high court on the same issue, getting a decision in its favour.

The enrolments could have been higher this year if NU had opened registration for previous PET batches early.