‘Panjab University’s dept of education has maximum registered scholars’
Department of education has 374 registered scholars, followed by the department of laws, 261; question of quality arises as there are fewer supervisors available.
The Panjab University’s department of education has the highest number of registered scholars, 374, followed by the department of laws, 261, said quality assurance cell (IQAC) report. According to the report, 2,911 research scholars are reported to have been registered at the various departments of the university.
The department of education was also awarded UGC special assistance programme in the thrust areas of education technology, education administration and management and education psychology and guidance.
However, talking about the supervisors available, the question of quality arises as the department of laws has a most number of researchers, 93, who have two supervisors while in the department of physics, 69 researchers have at least two supervisors, followed by the departments of botany and chemistry.
Only seven departments are those in which at least one student is supervised by two supervisors. There are eight departments in which only one student is assigned three supervisors. These include the department of biophysics, centre for systems biology and bioinformatics (UIEAST), the department of anthropology, department of chemistry, department of computer science and applications, department of environment studies, department of microbial biotechnology and the department of statistics.
According to the analysis, there are 82 supervisors on the campus, who have been handling a minimum of 8 research scholars and a maximum of 17.
Sources said PU has been rated high on the number of research papers and citations and handful of departments can be credited for the same.
“However, other departments have also been contributing considerably to the research performance of the PU. This becomes evident when we dig into various aspects of research performance of the university. The first stage of research at a university involves a single research student, who works under the supervision of a senior practitioner in that field of knowledge,” said Rajiv Lochan, director, Internal Quality Assurance Cell.
Lochan added, “Recently we inquired into statistical information about research supervision in the university according to the information made public by the various departments of PU. A total of 66 PU departments reported that they had registered research scholars.”
After the department of education and laws, departments of Chinese and Tibetan studies, and of nano-sciences have one research student each. The departments of botany, chemistry, physics, and physical education have more than 100 registered research scholars.
Why department of education has high number of scholars?
Professor Rajiv Lochan explained that through this analysis, it has been observed that the departments, which are not even considered for the PU grading are doing well, including the department of education. The figures indicate that a large number of students are taking interest in doing a research in the field of education in the new course of time. “There is a strong captive research in this field. Research on schools, students and teachers seems to be a big hit as these research subjects are always and easily available,” said Lochan.
