Scoop: Around 90 existing PhDs at NLS to be examined for current status of studies
NLSIU Bangalore has drastically overhauled its PhD in law programme, due to introduce full funding of the degree and set to make offers to five new PhD scholars around next week.
NLSIU vice-chancellor (VC) Prof Sudhir Krishnaswamy revealed yesterday, in an online webinar of five current and former national law school VCs hosted by JGLS Sonepat: “I can tell you in 2019 at NLS, we’ve slowed down the PhD programme. We’ve scaled back a huge amount.”
“I joined very late in the academic year - we are now advertising and selected [candidates],” he had added, in response to a question about postgraduate legal education by moderator and JGLS dean Prof Raj Kumar. “This is a different cohort of PhD students and we have promised all of them funding.”
We understand from an NLS source that the new PhD stipend would be Rs 25,000 per month, and that around five offers to candidates would be confirmed on that basis around next week.
Update 13:23: Nalsar Hyderabad had introduced fully-funded four-year PhD programmes around three years ago. Stipends are Rs 25,000 per month in the first year and Rs 35,000 per month in the subsequent three years, with around five new candidates admitted per year, including LLB graduates who will also obtain an LLM as part of the PhD programme. Nalsar VC Prof Faizan Mustafa had also introduced a similar Rs 25,000 stipend PhD programme at NLU Cuttack in 2010-11.
“All of them will be funded by NLS through the PhD years and we have a different approach now to this. [It is] not about scale, [it] is about quality,” noted Krishnaswamy.
We understand that there are currently around 90 PhD candidates at NLSIU, who are not being funded by the law school and some of whom might not be currently actively pursuing the degree at the moment. NLSIU is going through an exercise to confirm active PhD students, asking each to make a presentation about the current status of their research.
“We have a long way to go, we have rigorous course work, rigorous pathways ensuring supervision and quality of work,” Krishnaswamy had said in the JGLS session. “The PhD in India in law, that’s going to change.”
The NLSIU vice chancellor predicted that Covid-19 might not be all bad for Indian law schools.
“Covid is interesting - I think it affects the US, UK and Australian universities more than us,” he mused. During the current circumstances, he said, it was a possible pitch for Indian law schools to try and retain and attract post-graduate law candidates who might otherwise have gone abroad by default. “Try us,” he suggested Indian law schools could begin to say to such students.
“If we are able to up our standards we will change, using this crisis, what the Indian LLM and Indian PhDs mean,” Krishnaswamy said.
Comments
Good to see that atleast some of the law schools are investing in research production.
Best of luck to NLS in finding candidates that fit areas in which the institute can acceptably guide them.
LI: Complete silence to protect the reputation of certain law firms and universities
https://edition.cnn.com/2020/05/20/us/bad-job-market-graduates-coronavirus/index.html
Those reasons for undervaluing post grad degrees in law don’t exist in India. You need a post grad law degree to teach by law. Here its mostly because NLUs don’t allocate as much funds/ resources to their post grad programmes, they’re not rigorous and they don’t attract the best students. Good llb students almost as an article of faith want to do llms abroad. There is some elitism / colonial hangover built into it also.
So for those justifying the devaluing of the llm in India - based on this idea that it happens in the US. It might be worth asking why they think it’s an accurate comparision - and why so much of this prejudice is geared towards students of the programmes and not administrations and universities who are basically being fraudulent.
[quote]Direct PhD entry for grads in Engg, Architecture & Law
Engineering, Architecture and Law graduates can soon straight away enrol for doctorate programmes skipping the Masters, provided they clear the entrance examination and interview. At present, direct admission of B Tech students to PhD programs is permitted only in some of the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs). [/quote]
https://www.deccanherald.com/national/direct-phd-entry-for-grads-in-engg-architecture-law-754838.html
I proposed many alternatives - two of them was to force people into emerita status or to not give them courses they desire because of seniority and favouring junior profs. This is not that rare to do actually- and was done several times by my universities administration in the past. It’s also done abroad. A lot of these concerns about funds is misplaced - teacher salaries is not what is sucking money out of NLUs/ NLU profs hardly get paid competitive rates as is and student fees are bloated.
There are many reasons why people go to Jindal - of course money is a factor but so often it is because the older lot of teachers making working at NLUs a miserable experience. If this last wasn’t so widespread and incompetent older professors weren’t so entrenched in the NLUs / I’m sure more people would stick it out there instead of jgls.
The problem with the solution that you've proposed is this: on pen and paper, the admin can't justify those decisions, as the senior faculty have the experience and other things in their favour. Open discrimination against them, no matter how well-deserved, would surely see litigation etc. including suits on harassment that the admin prefers to avoid. Given the relatively small faculty group at an NLU, active non-cooperation from a certain faculty group also makes it very difficult for the admin to function properly. I speak as someone who's taught at more than one NLU for some time before returning to the industry.
Seniority is just one metric to measure ability no? Universities can decide to base course allocation on student feedback, they can decide to impose stricter standards of rigorous research on their faculty and enforce it. “Cooperation” between those who seemingly want to do good and those who are incompetent is what has led to this stagnation with NLUs. And it is what makes working for NLUs such a terrible experience even for motivated and idealistic young people. I too have worked in a couple of law schools - I work in one right now actually.
It isn't all that simple. Or maybe I just gave up.
It sucks but if institutions really want to improve - those in power who want to do some good need to grow a back bone and cause some discomfort to their long term colleagues who just aren’t doing their job.
https://www.barandbench.com/interviews/interview-malavika-prasad-legal-education-social-capital
SidChu is a NLSIU LLB with an LLM from the USA, i.e., different.
Similarly, the 5 NALSAR LLBs currently pursuing PhD (2) and LLM-PhD (3) do not have LLMs from the USA.
1. Give them posts which sound impressive, but involve menial admin work and zero teaching. For example, the post of Senior Assistant Registrar (Facilities) to supervise cooking and kitchen hygiene, gardening etc. Another post can be Assistant Dean (Rankings), wise only job will be to compile a list of publications, moot wins etc for NAAC.
2. Create vernacular law diploma courses and make them director of those.
3. Run all their PhD dissertations through plagiarism checkers. Under the new UGC rules action can be taken retrospectively.
The guy you recruit to teach instead of them will start at 63k/pm. After a while this person will see how others get paid 2 times and more for doing nothing and shall want to leave (read 9.1.1.1... above).
How does this suggestion change anything?
Same goes for point 2 you mention. Additional distance education courses help the older people earn money over and above the bigger salaries they draw.
It's like you people just don't understand the insides of a teaching institution despite having spent half a decade at one or the other!
Re: 3 - once they have become prof., they don't care if the PhD candidate fails due to plagiarism. They have nothing to gain from 'producing' another PhD. It doesn't add to their salary.
are they some sort of academic untouchables?
In light of that, your clarification appears to be rather specious. At most, you speak only for yourself and not the other commentaries who make those generalized disparaging comments.
Your point about the average graduate also lacks relevance in this context. From there, if you concludes that they would call a faculty or admin good/bad just because the person is from an NLU or not, then that's still a logical jump. And of course there are idiots graduating from those law colleges, just as there are those who graduate from NLUs too. Which is why one comes back to the original point, judge a person based on their work, publications, student feedback, administrative reputation and success, and by nothing else. Which is rarely done in this comments section.