On 27 August 2026, the University of Delhi issued a public notice announcing the opening of PhD applications for the ongoing academic session, with a small caveat. As an provisional measure for this, the debut year of completion of the university’s FYUP (Four Year Undergraduate Programme) under the controversial New Education Policy, 2020 of the incumbent Union government, the applications were opened to the said “four year” undergraduates without the ordinary eligibility criteria of UGC-NET or any other additional certification.

“The fourth-year programme is designed to bring research and entrepreneurship into undergraduate education and align Indian degrees with global academic standards,” the central university said as per an authorless report published by Princy Shukla for India Today. “Students completing FYUP do not necessarily need to pursue a master’s degree, as an academic pathway to doctoral study has already been provided,” also clarifying that the same was a special provision for the 2026-27 academic session.

While the measure was ostensibly designed to bring research and entrepreneurship into undergraduate education and “align Indian degrees with global academic standards”, the student response to it, especially in the context of the recent and significant resignation of the Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan after a national uproar over widespread corruption within the publication sector, has been laden with scepticism and scorn.

“They are handing out PhDs like ISKON flyers,” said one of the 35,943 DU students who completed the debut FYUP (less than half of the total number of students enrolled for the Bachelors’ degree in that batch).

The student questioned the university’s claim that the newly instated fourth year program in any way compensated for the research experience that comes with a postgraduate degree, alleging that faculty for these programs are untrained and underqualified to lead guided research programs and play fast and lose with academic standards in order to complete the formalities’ of guiding their scholars to the completion of their respective researches.

While 12,111 students of the 75,958 that enrolled into the debut batch of FYUP (over 40,000 of whom did not bother with the fourth year) applied for DU’s “one-year postgraduate programmes”, another special provision for the 2026-27 session, the radical changes in the path toward academic research raises questions about the rigour, transparency, and obsolescence of such a programmec, especially considering the university itself has qualified it as redundant considering undergraduates are directly eligible for the university’s PhD program subject to CGPA cutoffs.

The decision has also sparked discontent among the lakhs of Indian students who do not belong to this microscopic and experimental batch of graduates, in DU and across the rest of the country, who have had to undergo the tedious, mandatory, and centralised UGC-NET examination conducted by the controversial National Testing Agency (NTA), which has been under fire for its non-Parliamentary constitution, “private society” classification, profit-generating capacity, and–most importantly–consistent failure of performance leading to allegations of gross corruption.

As per a PTI release, an unnamed NTA senior official revealed on August 28 2026, a day after the DU notice was published, that of the 6.07 lakh students who appeared for the UGC-NET 2026-27 across 84 subjects, 97,000 had qualified for PhD applications, and only a mere 4,000 were eligible for JRF benefits, which is a 0.006% turnover. This result comes months after a conduct of examinations so rife with inefficiencies that three major examinations are set to be reconducted on 9 and 10 September due to the presence of overwhelming factual, typocgraphical, and linguistic errors.

India’s doctoral aspirants, those who have pursued a two-year post-graduate degree and cleared the UGC-NET process to meet the arduous national criteria, are in the midst of a severe unemployment crisis. A staggering figure of 70,000 unemployed NET, JRF, and PhD holders was presented at the National Research Conference and Higher Education Expo 2026–a figure that was reported by Dr. Sophia Langford for a private job retailing firm and soon spread through social and corporate networking sites as a rhetoric pushing people toward private sector opportunities and painting academia and research as dead end pursuits.

“The unemployment crisis strikes hardest at the pinnacle of academic achievement. Over 70,000 National Eligibility Test (NET), Junior Research Fellowship (JRF), and PhD holders remain jobless as of early 2026, victims of an oversupply clashing with limited vacancies in government universities,” Langford wrote on 11 February 2026, the last day of the conference-cum-expo. “NET, conducted by the National Testing Agency (NTA) under University Grants Commission (UGC) guidelines, qualifies candidates for lectureship and JRF funding, yet clearing it guarantees neither stable employment nor research support.”

Statistics, though, cannot counter this anti-science sentiment, not when those among even the mere 4,000 NET qualifiers who do hold JRFs (the 0.006%) are left stranded between institutes without the guarantee of a doctoral position.

A scholar of Russian, who not only holds a JRF but also has 6 years of teaching experience, was allegedly told by JNU’s Vice-Chancellor Prof. Santishree Dhulipudi Pandit to “stop referring to his teaching of remedial courses at the University’s own Russian centre at the School of Language Studies as ‘teaching experience’.”

“It’s “social work” and completely unnecessary,” she allegedly said during his interview. Pandit has also been accused of corruption, political bias, and most pressingly—abusing her authority to ensure caste supremacy within the University, by allegedly blocking the appointment of SC, ST, and OBC candidates throughout the duration of her tenure. (She also appeared on a YouTube podcast where she made derogatory remarks against Dalit individuals.)

The researcher also noted that Pandit’s behavior was similarly antagonistic toward all but the finally selected candidate. During the interview round, she allegedly told a female applicant to “focus on having kids, and not apply anywhere”, and mocked another applicant wearing formals, saying, “Naukri nahi lagi, coat pehen ke aagaye.” (“Haven’t got the job yet, and you have the audacity to wear a suit.”) The selected candidate was allegedly still in her second year of PG, without JRF, and without teaching experience.

Another JRF holder, who has been struggling to find a doctoral position since his qualification and who has over two years of research experience in his field, told this reporter that the JRF was the only reason he was holding out hope at all, and that otherwise his experiences at interviews by now were sufficient for him to give up.

It isn’t merely the relative injustice of what appears to be an attempt to advertise, incentivise, and retroactively justify an unpopular policy (the DU-FYUP program has, since its outset, been criticised by academics both within the university and outside it, with the DU Teachers’ Association going as far as to draft a Presidential Plea against it in 2025, to no avail) at the cost of the country’s remaining doctoral aspirants that has left students and faculty polarised, though. In the wake of the historic civil movement for Dharmendra’s Pradhan’s resignation following the NEET-UG crisis that take place parallel to the conduct of the year’s ironically mismanaged UGC-NET examination through the months of June and July, the most pressing concern among those familiar with DU’s bureaucratic corridors, is internal corruption.

“One rigged exam and you’re pursuing a PhD degree,” a DU alumni student said about the decision. “My friend (who has cleared NET-JRF) has given up on academia. He knows, before applying, exactly who will be selected, even for guest faculty positions—always someone from the ABVP, MRM, RSS Cadre.”

She adds that the problem is not limited to DU or the capital’s universities alone. “It’s the same in Shantiniketan (Visvabharti University), Meerut, AMU, everywhere. Not just JNU, JMI, and DU.” But it is worth considering that DU’s internal processes in particular have always been uniquely vulnerable to manipulation and the nexus of localised power dynamics, due to the University’s fractured identity as a monolith of physically, institutionally, and financially separate colleges. The power to conduct interviews, screen candidates, and even oversee the conduct of examinations in DU does not reside with a common entity like a vice-chancellor or an institute director, but with dozens of distinct individual ‘principals’, making it near impossible to ensure University-wide transparency and consistency of process.

The absolute local authority of these principals when it comes to college matters has been evident over the years by repeatedly surfacing criminal allegations against them ranging from rampant sexual abuse, to fund misappropriation, abetment of suicide, plagiarism, torture, and more within the confines of their respective campuses. One of the most shocking instances of such corruption breaking into the public light was during the Ad-Hoc replacements of 2023, through which repeated anonymous allegations were made of replacing long-term faculty with unqualified BJP-RSS associated candidates. Anonymous these allegations remained, until a terminated Hindu College Ad-Hoc teacher attested to them publically, after which he was harassed by the institute through a retracted job offer that cost him his alternative employment, and was eventually found dead by suicide.

Perhaps this is why, to DU students, even NTA in its disgraced public image, is a better alternative to the internal conduct of PhD selections by the University. As of 5 Septemer 2026 (Happy Teacher’s Day, innit?), DU has removed the notice from its website.

- Mouli Sharma is a journalist from New Delhi, currently reporting for the Kolkata based independent news platform, GroundXero. Her work has appeared in publications like The Mooknayak, Frontline, Maktoob Media, The Observer Post, The Leaflet, Nivarana, The Polis Project, Article 14, Feminism in India, SabrangIndia, NewsClick and others.