India’s doctoral education system is large, uneven, and under sustained regulatory pressure. The University Grants Commission (UGC), which governs higher education across the country, notified the UGC (Minimum Standards and Procedures for Award of PhD Degree) Regulations, 2022, on 7 November 2022 — replacing the earlier 2016 regulations and their two 2018 amendments. These were the most significant changes to doctoral programme rules in six years.

Since then, two further developments have added layers of complexity: a 2024 update expanding direct PhD eligibility for four-year undergraduate degree holders, and the discontinuation — announced in October 2024 and notified in February 2025 — of the UGC-CARE journal list that had served as the benchmark for publication quality since 2018.

This article examines each major change, the reasoning behind it, and the genuine concerns it has raised. It relies only on official UGC notifications, statements by the UGC Chairperson, and reporting from established sources. Readers should form their own conclusions.

What Changed in 2022: The Key Provisions

1. The mandatory publication requirement was removed.

Under the 2016 regulations, PhD scholars were required to publish at least one research paper in a UGC refereed or peer-reviewed journal, and to present two papers at conferences or seminars, before submitting their thesis for adjudication. The 2022 regulations removed this requirement entirely — replacing it with a strong recommendation rather than a mandate.

The UGC’s stated rationale was direct. UGC Chairperson M. Jagadesh Kumar said the mandatory publication requirement had led to a “journal business” in India, and that making anything mandatory does not improve the quality of research. Research had found that approximately 75% of submissions under the old requirement were not in quality Scopus-indexed journals — meaning the rule was producing publication volume without quality. The UGC also noted in 2019 that it had observed a proliferation of publications in online and predatory journals as a result of the mandate, leading it to institute the UGC-CARE reference list of quality journals that year.

Critics, however, were not entirely convinced by the removal. The All India OBC Students Association (AIOBCSA) pointed out a structural problem: while the mandatory clause was removed nationally, many universities continue to shortlist faculty candidates based on publication scores, and the Academic Performance Indicator (API) system still awards marks for publications in faculty recruitment. “Technically, this move will not give any relief to students of marginalized communities as there are 2 marks for each quality publication (up to 5 publications) for applying for the Assistant Professor job,” the association noted. In other words, the national mandate was removed, but the incentive structure that drives scholars toward publication — whether in quality journals or not — remains intact at the institutional level.

2. Part-time PhD programmes were formally introduced.

The 2022 regulations formally recognised part-time PhD programmes for working professionals for the first time. Candidates are required to obtain a No Objection Certificate (NOC) from their employer. The minimum and maximum duration for part-time PhDs is typically longer than for full-time programmes, acknowledging the constraints of concurrent employment.

The part-time provision has been broadly welcomed as a practical recognition of how research actually happens in India — particularly for faculty at colleges who pursue doctoral work while teaching full-time. The question of supervision quality, research infrastructure access, and institutional accountability for part-time scholars remains an area requiring clearer guidelines.

3. Direct PhD admission from four-year undergraduate programmes was enabled.

Students who complete a four-year undergraduate degree with a minimum of 75% marks in aggregate (or its equivalent CGPA) are now eligible for direct PhD admission without a master’s degree. A relaxation of five per cent is available for SC, ST, OBC (non-creamy layer), differently-abled, and economically weaker sections candidates.

In April 2024, UGC Chairperson Jagadesh Kumar confirmed that such candidates can also directly appear for the NET examination, irrespective of the discipline in which they obtained their four-year bachelor’s degree. This provision is aligned with the National Education Policy 2020’s push toward flexible, multidisciplinary pathways and the four-year undergraduate programme structure now being adopted across central universities.

4. The M.Phil. degree was discontinued.

The 2022 regulations specified that the M.Phil. degree shall be de-specified from the academic year 2022–23 onwards. M.Phil. degrees awarded prior to the notification remain valid. This effectively closes the intermediate research qualification that many institutions had used as a stepping stone to doctoral programmes, and which was the basis of eligibility for some admission routes under the earlier regulations.

5. Online PhD programmes remain prohibited.

The regulations explicitly state that no university or college shall conduct PhD programmes through distance education mode or online mode. This was a clarification in response to growing confusion created by edtech platforms claiming to offer UGC-recognised online PhDs. The UGC has separately warned students against taking admission in such programmes.

6. Coursework, Shodhganga, and anti-plagiarism requirements were retained and strengthened.

Mandatory coursework of 12–16 credits remains required for all PhD scholars, to be completed during the initial one or two semesters. Thesis submission must be accompanied by an anti-plagiarism originality report meeting UGC 2018 thresholds. An electronic copy of all awarded PhD theses must be submitted to Shodhganga, the open-access national repository maintained by INFLIBNET. Thesis evaluation requires assessment by the supervisor plus at least two external examiners — with at least one from outside the state and at least one from outside the university.

The UGC-CARE List: Created, Criticised, and Discontinued

To understand the current state of research publication standards for PhD scholars, it is necessary to understand what happened with the UGC-CARE list.

In November 2018, the UGC established the Consortium for Academic and Research Ethics (CARE) to create and maintain a reference list of quality journals. The CARE list was a direct response to the predatory journal crisis: the number of articles in predatory journals had risen almost eightfold in the years prior, with Indian academics accounting for over a third of the authors globally. The UGC’s Academic Performance Indicator regulations, introduced in 2010 to incentivise research output among faculty, had inadvertently accelerated this — academics burdened with high teaching loads had responded to the publish-or-perish pressure by submitting to journals that promised fast publication for a fee.

The CARE list attempted to define what a quality journal looked like. It drew significant criticism over its six years of operation. Researchers and institutions raised concerns about over-centralisation in deciding journal quality, unnecessary delays in adding or removing journals, the presence of some predatory journals within the list itself, lack of transparency in decision-making, and the exclusion of reputable journals published in Indian languages — a direct contradiction of NEP 2020’s emphasis on regional language scholarship.

In its 584th meeting on 3 October 2024, the UGC decided to discontinue the UGC-CARE list entirely. The decision was notified publicly on 11 February 2025. In place of the centralised list, the UGC has developed suggestive parameters for selecting peer-reviewed journals — covering criteria such as ethical publishing practices, impact factors, citation records, and AI-generated content policies — and has recommended that Higher Education Institutions develop their own mechanisms for evaluating publication quality.

The response from the academic community has been divided. Supporters argue that decentralisation corrects the problems of over-regulation and better accommodates non-STEM disciplines, humanities, social sciences, law, and Indian-language scholarship. Critics argue that without a central benchmark, the door is opened wider for institutional manipulation, politically motivated faculty appointments, and a further proliferation of predatory publishing. As one researcher quoted in a Scroll.in investigation put it: “Critics argue that this opens further pathways for predatory journals to flourish.”

What the Regulations Have Not Resolved

Three structural problems in Indian doctoral education persist regardless of what the 2022 regulations say on paper.

The infrastructure gap. The total number of universities in India nearly doubled from 764 in 2014 to 1,338 in 2025, but many operate with poor infrastructure and inadequate faculty-student ratios. Labs in many universities are either outdated or non-functional. Most reputable international journals and academic books exist behind paywalls that university libraries in smaller institutions cannot afford to subscribe to. Only 2–3% of PhD scholars in India receive fellowships of Rs. 35,000 or above, and scholarship payments are frequently delayed by several months — sometimes by a year — forcing scholars to take employment to survive. The 2022 regulations set minimum standards; they do not provide the resources needed to meet them.

The supervision quality problem. The regulations specify supervisor qualification standards and cap the number of PhD students a supervisor may guide simultaneously. They do not resolve the underlying variability in supervision quality across institutions, or the power asymmetry between scholars and supervisors that makes many complaints go unfiled and unreported.

The incentive misalignment. The UGC removed the mandatory publication requirement because it was generating publications in predatory journals rather than quality research. But it has not yet replaced that requirement with a different accountability mechanism at the national level. Individual universities are now free to set their own publication requirements — meaning the actual standard a PhD scholar must meet depends significantly on which institution they attend. At the same time, faculty appointment and promotion criteria at many institutions continue to reward publication volume. The pressure that drove scholars to predatory journals has not disappeared; it has simply been decentralised.

What This Means for Researchers

For PhD scholars currently enrolled or planning to enrol, the practical implications of the 2022 regulations are these: the national mandatory publication requirement is gone, but your university may still require it. The M.Phil. pathway to PhD eligibility is closed. Part-time options are now formally available. The anti-plagiarism and Shodhganga submission requirements remain non-negotiable. And the benchmark against which your publications will be assessed — previously the UGC-CARE list — is no longer maintained centrally, meaning you should now evaluate journals against UGC’s suggestive parameters and the standards set by your institution.

For researchers publishing work on these regulations, or submitting papers that engage with Indian higher education policy, the honest assessment is that the 2022 framework represents a genuine attempt to address real failures — particularly the predatory journal problem and the rigidity of a one-size-fits-all publication mandate. But the decentralisation of key quality decisions, from publication standards to journal evaluation, places the burden of accountability on institutions whose capacity and integrity vary enormously. Whether that decentralisation empowers universities or simply reduces oversight is a question the next few years of implementation will answer.

This article is based on UGC official notifications, statements by UGC Chairperson M. Jagadesh Kumar as reported by Business Standard, Indian Express, Careers360, and PTI, and published academic and journalistic analysis of doctoral education in India. All regulatory details reflect the UGC (Minimum Standards and Procedures for Award of PhD Degree) Regulations, 2022, as notified on 7 November 2022, and subsequent UGC circulars through February 2025.