New Delhi: A former Vice-Chancellor of Delhi University has raised serious concern over the declining standards of India's doctoral programmes, warning that high levels of plagiarism, shoddy supervision and poor-quality research are increasingly tarnishing the country's academic reputation.

Recounting his experience, he said he was alarmed soon after taking charge when a sitting Supreme Court judge wrote to him about blatant plagiarism in a PhD thesis in law that had been submitted to him for evaluation. While expressing dismay over the candidate's conduct, he said the supervisory professor — a senior academic — had displayed shocking negligence.

During his tenure, the university chief said he repeatedly encountered substandard dissertations flagged by diligent external examiners. In one instance, a mathematics thesis from a once-reputed university was found to be no better than poorly written undergraduate notes. Another case involved a political science dissertation that drew trivial inferences from weak data.

He also cited a report from a leading US-based mathematician who was allegedly harassed by a doctoral candidate from an Indian university attempting to push through his degree using irregular means.

While acknowledging that some universities still produce high-quality PhDs, particularly in premier institutes like IITs, IISERs and IISc, he said such examples remain the exception. The main culprit, he stressed, is the severely inadequate quality of research faculty across most institutions — a systemic flaw that the University Grants Commission and the Ministry of Education must urgently address.

He plans to submit concrete suggestions to help rectify the situation.