Bharat Rakshak

Hello People
I invite you to a very focussed discussion on 'How to Create more Phds in India?(particularly in Engineering)'
Let me tell you at the outset that this is not another of futile discussions. I in touch of people who can benefit from your ideas and can really make a difference. Many if not most of the members of this forum come from a technical background and we have a rich diversity over here.

India produces about 500-600 Phds every year as against China's 5000-6000. The quality of even these many doctorates might be debatable. Education is in crisis at all levels in India. Even permiere Institutes like IITs and IIMs are already having a faculty crunch and it is going to get more difficult.

Every year about 60,000 students leave for US for higher education. That is an indicator that there is a sizeable number of people who are willing to go for higher education and are willing to pay big money for it. While countries like Singapore have successfully demonstrated that it is possible to create quality institutes in partnership with ivy league institutes within a short time span, we have been tied up with quotas and regulations.

To start with I pose a few questions:
1.How is it that China manages to produce such large number of Phds and we dont?
2.Why is that none of the top Indian institutes experiments with having diversity among its students viz. nationality, economic and cultural background?
3.Why do not Indian institutes manage their own affairs by having a sizeable number of International students, stopping the stupid across the board subsidy of higher education and attaining financial independence?
4. Why are the Professors still continuing in their jobs even thought their yearly compensation is less than monthly take home slararies of many of their students?
5.what is the comparative cost & Return on Ivestment of education among major global Institutes in the world viz. Indian
6. can Indian economy absorb a sizeable number of highly skilled people with best compensation in the world?

if the people you are in touch with are GoI folks, here is a simple request: ask them to resign ... will make one hell of a difference ...

if they are business folks, here is a simple suggestion: pour in tons of moolah ... will also make a one hell of a difference ...

btw, this thread used to exist before ... maybe still around ... search for it ...

Just my 2 naya paisa

1.How is it that China manages to produce such large number of Phds and we dont?

Many students in China are supported fully by the Government. China is fully focussed on getting the best of technology. We are dilly dallying in delhi onlee.

2.Why is that none of the top Indian institutes experiments with having diversity among its students viz. nationality, economic and cultural background?
The education system in India looks at raw marks. Higher the %age, higher the chances for a candidate to get thru. Your question does not make sense.

3.Why do not Indian institutes manage their own affairs by having a sizeable number of International students, stopping the stupid across the board subsidy of higher education and attaining financial independence?
Education is still expensive for majority of the students. To run a sophisticated lab and equipment it requires moolah. Most of the institutions would not survive without government aid.

4. Why are the Professors still continuing in their jobs even thought their yearly compensation is less than monthly take home slararies of many of their students?
I have no answer for this.

5.what is the comparative cost & Return on Ivestment of education among major global Institutes in the world viz. Indian
No idea.

6. can Indian economy absorb a sizeable number of highly skilled people with best compensation in the world?

Ofcourse, yes it can.

IB4TL ??

The higher education system in India needs, among other things:

1. money - increase the number of grants and the RsRsRsRs in them.
2. decrease the red tape - especially in bioscience: students should be able to get the chemicals etc. they need without having to hope and pray and wait for 1-6 months.
3. better salaries for profs.

A significant change is needed.

From the hints of Montek, they are hopefully going to make a big push in the upcoming plan for education.

Hallelujah...the question comes up again. . I actually began to miss that thread 'Poll: Science and Tech and Universities' (or something similar) that B.Singh had started. One question to ask is what lies ahead after the Ph.D. If a student is willing to spend 4-6 years of his life working 7 days and 6 nights a week, the first thing he would check is to see if post-Ph.D, he will make atleast the same salary as an English-speaking, 12th pass (or fail) call-center employee.

If you want more people to do a Ph.d in India, the real questions to ask are: Why would a student want to do a Ph.d in the first place? What would drive him in that direction? And, equally important, what would deter or dissuade him from doing a Ph.d. You can create a zillion good universities, but if the B.E./B.Tech/B.Sc graduate has other options based on market forces, those Ph.D seats will lie vacant. And one other thing: This should not be a gorment-onlee effort . Private sector should be asked to drive this as well (as opposed to merely getting their suggestions/comments 'for implementashun bye di gorment').

that's exactly right ... here is a parallel situation:

for deacdes I have heard the question. "why does India not produce more fast bolwers?" ... well, here are some facts:

1. the total number of well paying jobs in that field = 4 or 5

2. average length of emplyment = about 3 years

3. probability of injury = very high

4. pension plan = poor

5. career prospects after 5 years = minimal

the "solution by committee" was to establish an "institute for fast bowlers" ... the same committee that pockets the revenue and pays pittance to Ranji players and does not improve the infra-structure and stadia ...

I would hate to see what solution by committee is in store for the education system ...

Just yesterday there was a news item that all the IITs requested GoI/MHR to reserve 25% seats for foreign students in masters program. They want to do that to create diversity and fill up the available seats that are going vacant every year.

So even IITs are having problem filling up available seats in their graduate schools?

the 3 reasons I know for going to grad school are as follows:



are the IITs struggling even to acquire the thrid category folks?

the title of the thread should be "how can India trim the wastage in PhD production?"

Proves my point that the market for R&D in India is not great. It is pointless to throw more money and develop the facilities further, it will only create more post-graduates looking for jobs. While I did not see the article mentioned above, I am going to bet that the unfilled seats are in the non-IT related areas such as Civil, Chemical, Metallurgy, Mech (?), etc.

My feeling is that given the good job market in India today, there is no reason for a Bachelor's graduate to not face real life and out-earn professors . The main (engineering-related) job generator in India is the IT field, and for the most part, they are not the kind of jobs that absolutely require a Masters.

1.How is it that China manages to produce such large number of Phds and we dont?

Because we are more interested in $$ and Charishma. We don't have $$ to give. But we can as a society build charishma. We have respect that we can show our learned people (which WAS our culture). The respect should come from institutions and all aspects of popular culture. We should also respect a PhD and not give it to people who don't deserve it. We should also recognize a PhD for whats its worth. Not ask a PhD to write an exam along with BEs to get a job. ****reserve 10 % of jobs for PhDs and see their number soar****

2.Why is that none of the top Indian institutes experiments with having diversity among its students viz. nationality, economic and cultural background?

Because the top is so few and there is wide gap between them and next tier it is not fair to being non merit considerations into picture. Will make sense when this problem is solved.

3.Why do not Indian institutes manage their own affairs by having a sizeable number of International students, stopping the stupid across the board subsidy of higher education and attaining financial independence?

Give them 10 years to get off the "milk bottle" habbit. Decrease funds by 10 % per year. Appoint proper business people as VCs or create a similar coexisting position for management.

4. Why are the Professors still continuing in their jobs even thought their yearly compensation is less than monthly take home slararies of many of their students?
With they leave so I can take that job!!!!!!!

5.what is the comparative cost & Return on Ivestment of education among major global Institutes in the world viz. Indian
6. can Indian economy absorb a sizeable number of highly skilled people with best compensation in the world?
Yes.

Simple answer would be where would a 40+ year old go ? Even if you were a star prof with lots of research ideas to work on, the chances are not very great to land a tenured position even in a C-grade university in the USA.

The question can be rephrased as follows : Why would a young person with a PhD plus a few years of post-doc experience consider a measly salary of Rs2lakh/year and return to India ?

Answer: Since he/she cannot get a equal tenure track position in the USA or elsewhere on planet earth. The Indian institutes have fed on this pipeline for long and hence see no need to raise salaries.

If I may, another reason for going to grad school (typically for Masters in a phoren univ) is:

4. Going for Masters is the 'in' thing. Dont want to left behind and be branded an under-achiever. Could be termed as 'indirect peer pressure'.

Traditionally in the sciences china had a program to export high quality students to PhD programs in the west. Traditionally the physics departments used to be filled with chinese students at the 50% or more level in B-grade schools (ranks 30-100).

Many of these students branch out into interdisciplinary areas soon after landing in the USA since industry job options have been less than optimal for them considering poorer language skills. Many have since very likely returned to their homeland following their PhD and a few post-doc years to establish modest programs back in China and the cycle continues.

So if one may speculate, the main reason for the large number of PhDs from China is their poor English language skills so the best of their students are confined to academia on low paying jobs.

does anyone know (or point me to relevant websites) the statistics (even rough or old) about Indian PhD students in america and where do they up after their studies (academia/industry) ... i was just wondering what happens to the hordes of MS students (~30K) who go every year from India ...it seems almost unbelievable that a tiny fraction of these dont end up doing phd. wont they prefer asst prof postions at IIT/NITs rather than endless cycles of post-docs in US?

Bade, what time zone are you in.....? Or is it the case that you need a dash of Scotch to help you sleep ? If so, try Red Label.


It seems to me that the original intent of the question was regarding the production of Chinese Ph.ds from China i.e. via their own educational system (atleast, that's my reading). My brief comment is that the China case ought to be irrelevant to the Indian situation. India should 'produce' more or fewer Ph.ds depending on its own needs and not what China, Russia or Mongolia does.

Right now, is there an actual shortage of Ph.Ds? If so, by how many? Which companies (Govt. or Private) are looking for Ph.ds and not finding them? In what areas of research? We need numbers on these. Also, how many Master's students are currently opting for a Ph.d? Why are the numbers so few? How many Bachelor's students are opting for a Masters? Why are M.Tech seats going vacant (per Katare's post above)? Good students are a requirement for a research program, without them there is no research . We need statistics on the above to apply the right fixes to the problem, or rather, identify what the real problems are.

If scientists and researchers today are leaving their current employment and heading out, these questions should be addressed prior to funding and feeding the Ph.D pipeline, IMHO.

in my experience, most would intellectually prefer faculty positions in India but the salary factor puts them off ... they don't necessarily enter the perpetual-postdoc cycle ... most end up finding positions in industry ...

someone posted that guys without a Masters degree are not getting good marriage proposals in Gujarat ... regardless of their income level ....

some searching showed that other people too are thinking about this ..
he says we in india produce about 30 phd in comp science per year ....where are the R&D labs (google/hp/yahoo/Msft Res) recruting from then?
prof from UCI

Can you provide a source for your statistics?

Assuming your statistics are accurate, can we then proceed to probability - if an Indian PhD candidate and a Chinese PhD candidate in exactly the same field and branch were to swap their universities in India and China respectively, what is the probability of each one of them successfully getting their PhDs?

You are also pointing out some problems in IITs and IIMs - these have traditionally dealt with engineering and management. I don't think all IIMs have doctoral (PhD) programs.

You can you take problems that technical institutes are facing and a consider them to be representative of all PhD programs?

Srikumar, in the early 80's the number of PhDs that chinese univs produced were far less than India, anecdotal from a chinese prof himself. The story does fit well with their cultural revolution history where higher education was looked down upon unless it was to make bums and launch long marching rockets. So there was a concerted effort following the revolution to fill the gaps and the best way was to send the talented kids abroad to get a PhD...begining of the cycle. All I was saying was many have returned since to their former institutes begining the mid to late 90's to mass produce many more PhDs from the chinese system.

The chinese scholars are well connected to the research labs in various univs through their network of grad students and post-docs to find them 2-3 year stints in the US. There used to be a 4-5 storey building dedicated to material science/high Tc superconductivity research, where I had spent a few of my younger days, which was filled with post-docs almost 99% of whom were chinese. Even the chinese faculty who were from other branches looked down upon this mass factory of paper crunchers as a sweat-shop.

If they were as English capable as Yindoos then many would have found jobs in the west and stayed back. But many researcher types do return back to China as they fail to get tenure track teaching positions. Industry jobs would be more difficult except at the lowest levels. Exceptions are there of course.

A summary of discussion and some of my own additions:

1.Expecting GoI to do something in this regard is a waste of time.

2.Among other reasons reason for higher number of Phds in China is governmental support and return of chinese scholars abroad(probably because of understanding English)

3.Indian Education system gives a disproportionate higher weightage to marks.

4.We need more money in education (preferably private) and better salaries for Professors.

5.Doing a Phd is often 'procrastination' and its not financially sensible to go for a Phd.

Though its largely true but teaching is a respected profession in India where guru is next or maybe higher to the status of God. There are techies who are frustrated even with high salaries and would like to go for higher education just for the love of learning.Also the compensation level in research are going up with setting up of MNC's like GE,Yahoo, Google etc's research centres.

6. Phds deserve more respect from society as 'scholars'.

Depends on knowledge of the 'scholar'.

7. Professors continue in their respective jobs because they are used to it and dont have other suitable job opportunities.

While this might be true of some 'lesser' Institutes, a sweeping statement like this is downright insult to some of our esteemed professors who can anyday walk into Ivy League Institutes at 10x compensation abroad. some names that come to mind are Prof CNR Rao, Ashok Jhunjhunwala, Pankaj Jalote, Prof Agarwal of Prime-Non Prime fame.

8.There is peer pressure among students to go for higher education.

9. There are a sizeable number of people who do MS in USA and return back to their normal IT jobs in India and in some case to unemployment.

10.Need some more time regarding SriKumar posers on numbers.

some relevant links to get more info are attached:
http://www.rediff.com/money/2006/mar/10iit.htm
(an article stating the need of more Phds that puts number of Phds in Engineering at 700+)
http://www7.nationalacademies.org/ocga/testimony/Gathering_Storm_Energizing_and_Employing_America2.asp
(maybe we can learn something from this US report on need for better quality education)
http://www.carnegiefoundation.org/centennial/index.asp
(maybe we need a foundation like this)
http://www.cse.iitk.ac.in/users/jalote/GenArticles/Elitex2003.pdf
(Prof. Pankaj Jalote's presentation on importance of Phds)

(Since I am on an IT-Vity tirade)
When we were in grad school we were informed by the CS guys that it was financially irrelevant to do a PhD in CS. But that was not the case for those of us in Health Sciences....while them MS in CS types were pulling in their six figures out of grad schools the MS in Health Sciences kids would get the lab monkey jobs from 48-60K. The only way they could move up in their profession is by getting a PhD.

In the healthcare world where there are real doctors on the front lines of cure and research you need to have a real doctorate to stand your ground and stake your claim.

So doing a PhD becomes an academic and financial necessity in certainly fields while the IT-Vity types can get away without it. Its certainly cannot be generalized.

the VC of Lucknow University is busy doing this:

finish this doha:

Guru Govind dou khadae, kakae lagoon paav?

Guru to salaa chor hai, Mulayam diyo batai

I always wanted to ask this... In health sciences whats the relationship between a medic doing research and a molecular biologist doing research. Do the paths of these researchers coming from entirely different worlds cross or the domains are entirely different? Or is it more like physics and engineering?

I always thought this doha created a contradiction. First, the doha-creator (was it Kabir?) sought the services of a guru to meet God and when guru does get him a meeting with God, the bhagat says that guru is greater than God. Well if he is, why seek God in the first place? The guru was always there.


Anyway, coming to the topic of this thread, when I was doing M.Sc. in Delhi U, I came to know that several Ph.D aspiring candidates expected their gurus to write their papers for them. Clearly, such Ph.Ds we don't need. Therefore, I would suggest changing the title to something like "How to produce more quality Ph.Ds in India?"

Alok_m:
There are LOT MORE than molecular biologist when it comes to health sciences research. I am using health sciences to sort of cover the entire turf from bench research to policy. There are variations in every field and setting.

I am more on the policy side and I work with MD with PhD or with an MPH or MS who are experts on the clinical and policy side. This puts them in a very good position to understand the science of the research. There are other MD who are clinical specialists and what they say about current technologies/procedures carries a LOT of weight. But they don't have a PhD in say molecular biology to suddenly grasp the nuances being put forward the Molecular biologist/other specialist about a new treatment protocol. So you need to dumb it down to their level (coz its in your interest that you get the person who already an opinion leader in the field on your side). This is where personalities and managing egos come into play (especially in Pharma)

Then again you could be in academia doing kutta-billi-chooha research (an affable term used by my IT-Vity friends to describe bench sciences) and spend all your time working on some pre-clinical phenomenon which has no clinical impact just yet and may never see a doctor besides your own primary care physician.

Kabir's version:

Guru Govind dono khade, kake lagoon paav
balihari gurudev ki govind diyo milaaya

A non-contradictory version:

Guru Gobind Singh ji khade ...

Thank you.. So mostly the medics usually got all the moolah (and direct the bigger picture) while the poor geeky mol biologist toileth away with microarrays

nicely done ... Advait version onlee ...

Alright guys, ya got me started. What did ya learn in high school?
And how good is the memory? . Next doha in that list:

2. Yeh tan vish ki belari, Guru Amrit ki Khan.
Sees diya jo guru mila..... and complete this line!

3. Guru kumhar shish kumbh hai, gadi gadi kadhai khot,
Anthar haath sahaar de, ......and....?

I forget the next doha in this para, but the last one goes like this:

5. Sab dharti kagad karoon, lehkni sab banrai
saath samundar ki masi karoon,.........($5 to the one who completes this).

Actually, if anyone can give the first line (only) of the 4th doha, I'd appreciate that. A chotta peg on me.

in the days of google, such challenges are easily met ... however, I am not inclined to do it because of two reasons:

1. its way off topic by now.

2. my lazy musharraf goes by the following advice from Kabir Das:

aaj kare so kaal kar, kaal kare so parson
aisee bhi kyaa zaldi hai, abhi pade hai barson

I feel the pull of a handful MNCs for desi/phoren PhDs is being over-emphasized especially when most of them are IT/WebApp kind of technology companies. Only exception being GE which seems to be hiring MTech/MS/PhDs from across the board & to some extent other auto manufacturers like Daimler Chrysler.

The IT type of companies are not in a terrible bind anyways because they can always move folks (more than willing) out of their US operations to India with compensations of anywhere between 40% to 75% of what they make in US. And this will not affect the compensation of a local-PhD-hire.

Status quo is not at all conducive for retention, mass-production or seduction of (potential) PhDs from within or outside India.

Pass a law that top 5% of women (selected by peer voting of male colleagues in educashun, nature and beauty) have to marry only Phds.

Here is what we can do to improve Class12+

1)Improve classI-12 education. How? OST.

2)

2a)GoI should take JEE type exams. Anyone over 18 or 12-passed can appear. The students can appear any number of times in these exams. Three attempts will be free and subsquent attempts would involve fee equal to cost.

2b)Based on their scores they get Rs 0 to Rs 10000 for next 48 months or till they are 22 yrs old, which ever earlier. Something like Rs (100 - Percentile Position)*10000 is the cash they will get.

2c)No condition that he should attend any bloody college. If the topper thinks that he is better off blowing away Rs 10000/mo for next 48 months on booze and X-rated activities and work in a cycle repair shop, then he is RIGHT.

3)GoI gives ZERO grants to grants and lands to colleges, except medicine and defence. IITs should be made part of military. Let 1000 private colleges boom.

=======

This will improve higher education. PhDs or no PhDs, we will overtake West in education using above steps. As far technology and economy goes, education plays negligible role compared to administrative procedures. As long as administrative proceures are in mess, no amount of B Tech and M Tech and PHDs would help. So if the hope is that by having good engineers and PhDs we will be able tp beat West, this is pipe-hope.

Well the Sr. Mol Biologist (Associate Dir/Dir/VP) who work for Pharma usually park their BMW 5 series right next to the MD's who work with them. Also remember that the Mol Biologist got a free ride through grad school (assistantship/fellowships) the MD usually has $200K in debt. It all works out.

To play the devil's advocate (and because this is something I've wondered about) - what evidence actually exists that having more PhDs, cutting-edge researchers etc in a country actually improves the rate at which its citizens become richer? Japan after WWII (which in any case started at a far higher base than India) spent decades being simply a low-cost manufacturer before becoming known for innovation. Similarly for South Korea where Samsung etc before the mid-1990s weren't known for anything cutting-edge.

Is there any larger national interest in spending government money on enabling PhD creation or basic science research in India? Why can't the Indian government simply take the quantum of already developed technology and work to make it more easily available in India, and leave the basic science research to the developed world? Serious question.

Note that I'm only talking about government money (which is public and therefore open to debate by the tax-paying public). If free market incentives are such that more PhDs, basic science research etc happen in India without requiring government intervention, then more power to them.

The label of PhDs aside, having good quality scientists and engineers is necessary in becoming rich, and creating a military necessary to save us from liberation. Also, having superlative engineers will enable us in liberating other countries.

The question is : how can we manufacture 1000s of good quality engineers and scientists



To copy efficiently, you may not need high quailty scientists, but do need high quality engineers. We too, right now, should focus on cut-copy-paste than innovate. We dont have time and money to innovate.



Along with money, I request you to add "land" in the equation. Land these days is importanter than money.

As of now, except for defense needs, GoI MUST not fund PhDs.

(Aside : And PhDs programs in fields other than science and maths should be officially de-recognized. Let private sectors come with whatever titles and certificate they want for various fields like history, sociology, litreture, psycology, anthropology, finance, music, painting, dancing, archeology, economics etc etc, but should NOT to be allowed to use the title of "Doctor" and degree of PhD. But word "Doctor" should be reserved for those who repair humans and those who do real research in science/maths and entities of nature, not those who discover or fabricate phenomenon about human minds and society. There is nothing non-trivial about human mind and human societies. So where is the scope of re-search to begin with?)



God is not vindictive. He has made laws of physics, and now He goes by that. So depending on my Karma, He will give me what I deserve.

OTH, if I dont touch feet of Guru first, he might give me a F-.

So Guru first.

And I better cook up a good reason. I cant say "See boss, God ke paav pehele chhootaa to Guru mere ko F- de detaa". That would make me look coward and an unethical person. So I will say something like "It was thru Guru I met God, and hence Guru first".