Taming the Indian PhD High Horse?
The other day I was speaking to one of the students from NIT, doing a summer internship in my lab. I was asking him to join our lab to pursue research, as he was planning to do higher studies after completing his undergraduate. He said he would like to do it in the US, although he agreed that the research going on in our lab is very interesting for him.
The story is not new for me. I hear the variation of from my own undergraduate project students, despite showing to them that they can do research here itself and get it published in top quality journals. One reason for this could be simple peer pressure. There are many others. One of them is given in the cartoon below made by me. The basic idea for this cartoon came from Prof. Pradip Dutta of IISc, over a discussion this summer. Hope I have captured the perspective intact. Enjoy…
Update on Aug 8, 2007: Obliging the request of The Visitor at his blog, Sundar Narayanan has responded to this post here with a demo on how to tame the PhD High Horse. He also promises a long response soon.
Update on Aug 15, 2007: Sundar Narayanan has made a serious response to this post. Exactly to what point(s) raised in this post he is responding to (disagreeing or agreeing with), I leave it to the judgment of the readers.
Update on Aug 31, 2007: The student mentioned in the first sentence of this post came to me for a “reco” a week back, as he is applying to US universities for his MS!
And to list here another instance that happened in my career that is related to what I have written in this post, here is an email correspondence I received YESTERDAY from one of my friends in another college within Tamil Nadu, about the possibility of one of his UG students joining me for MS program, this coming semester:
This is to inform you that the student I referred to will not be joining you. He had taken GATE last year but couldn’t qualify. So, he is very nervous that he won’t be able to clear GATE, even if he takes again during 2008. So he has decided that he would go to Southampton, without aid. He doesn’t mind taking bank loan of Rs. 12 lakhs. I wasn’t/am not happy with his decision. But it is up to him to decide what risk to take and what not.
I live in this reality and I would like to do something to change this; Let me see…
this post, on taming the Indian PhD high horse. Here is a demo from Jr. and the little one on how to tame the PhD high horse (or elephant) as the case may be! [IMG ] This is the short answer. The long response will come later this week.
Don’t blame the system; it is still the mindset; “WEST IS BEST” JUST THINK OF THIS: Do iits welcome faculty applicants from US and India impartially? Isn’t there a bias in favor of the ‘foreign returned’?
Yes, there are many things we can do better in our academic system. But that is more excuse than reason for the west-seekers.
it may be the faculty perspective. over 50% of my faculty having a U.S degree, it doesn’t mean that they cant clear so called tough interview. there are some reasons which no one of us ready to accept in public.
I have heard people say that when I myself went to pursue my Ph.D. abroad, how can I complain that undergraduates in India aren’t willing to stay back to do their Ph.D.s with me. Well, what I have to say now, I wouldn’t have said a few years back, but what the heck, I am better now than the faculty I had as a student, and I am better than many of the faculty in many universities abroad! (Now that I am a faculty here, what’s the need for anyone to go abroad!!!) We need to wait for facts to speak for themselves, and wait longer for those who refuse to listen to the facts speak to be forced to listen some day. As a rule, undergrads don’t look for facts, me included when I was a UG. This also applies to undergrads in the US — it’s just that they blindly believe that US universities ought to be the best! I just tried to find out from my new MS student coming from a private engg. college on what his classmates are doing, and out of 60 odd students, only 2 are going to IIT, the other to M.Tech., but a handful to universities in US and UK. Upon questioning, he immediately says many people are scared of writing GATE! There may be a point in that we are too obsessed with the student having to know a lot before coming in rather than before leaving!
Hi Arunn,
I believe the simple reason that I would quote is that, after doing a PhD, in India, what are the job prospects for a student, who is really bright? What is the renumeration, and the quality of work that one may get? Certainly both of these factors are better in the US, aren’t they?
Lets look at the sheer number of opportunities, assuming the job is equally satisfying in India and US.
Universities : US : 3,000 for 3 million people. India : 300 for 1 billion people.
Research centers US: A very high number unknown to me, every company I can think of has some sort of research operation here,
India : (in our field, i.e. mechanical): GE, Shell, GM, basically 1% or less of the number in the US!!
The number of opportunities are much less in India.
jagan: i obtained my phd in the US because i didn’t clear GATE with enough percentile; and when i was actually called for a phd interview, despite this, in one of the premier institutes of India, I chickened out and never attended the interview.
satya and I (and Prof. Dutta) are trying to address the issue of why such students who seem to be talented enough for a phd in the US are not preferring Indian premier institutes…
prasad: i am yet to hear of a phd student from my lab or for that matter from ME dept. of our institute in search of a job. Whether the job that she has is a “suitable” one or not i don’t know – i don’t think a phd degree is meant for “training” one for a particular job.
On the other hand, I do agree that an economically prosperous country such as the USA will perhaps always have people flocking it for available opportunities. Only the proportion of the exodus makes one wonder if there is more to it than mere opportunities…
(i don’t have hard statistics yet from say, our placement cell, to substantiate more of my points – which I shall write later)
Hi Arunn,
I know of some (4) research scholars (MS / PhD) who are happy to work for an infosys, or an IBM, after doing MS/PhD, at a “coding” type back end job in Bangalore, simply because there are no good research jobs for them. The very brilliant get into faculty positions at IIT’s, and the few very good research centers. The rest do software jobs, which have no “research” involved!!! And when they compare (not always the right thing to do, but human!) their status to a guy, they think was less talented than them, but is in the US, and who is working for a Rolls-Royce/GE research center, nothing but frustration overcomes them!
Hello Dr.Arunn
I fully concur with the reasons i saw in your Cartoon for choosing abroad.One more thing i observed was there are not enough institutions which do real research out there which makes some of us (even with a high GATE, CSIR-JRF qualifiaction)to work in a field which is not their passion. Finally, inter-disciplinary research is not a common thing out there too.
Jeyarama Ananta: thanks for sharing your thoughts on this.
On a general note, observing the comments of some of us here and elsewhere about this issue, I cannot but appreciate the sagacity and foresight of some of the Indian UG students, while deciding on their higher educational pursuit.
Dr Arunn,
As an undergraduate student, I wish to bring up another point. Apart from higher funding for research, and more opportunities, I believe that other factors can also play an important role.
For example, in my opinion, the liberal cultural system, the absence of restrictive rules, and strong freedoms that an individual enjoys can also play a role in influencing a students decision.
[...] Based on some ten years of teaching and as many years as student in four different institutes of varying academic standing and pursuit and the associated observations, I am of the opinion that the GATE, if not totally at least to a large extent, is not serving its purpose. [...]