Pankaj Jalote
Department of Computer Science and Engg
I.
jalote [AT] iitk.ac.in
Most education comments or
policies focus on school education, or early college education
and do not consider the highest end of education – PhDs. Perhaps this highest
of all degrees is considered as esoteric or a luxury in a country where even
primary education is not available to all. However, unless this aspect is given
proper attention, the college level education level in the country will not
improve. Furthermore, we may not be able to fully tap the opportunity of
becoming the R&D centers of major corporations across the world – an
opportunity that is increasingly knocking our doors.
The demand for technical
education in our country has traditionally been large. With the growth of
knowledge based industries and the IT sector, this demand increased even more.
This led to most states allowing private colleges in the field of technical education
– a step that was necessary as government-aided colleges could not cope with
the demand. However, the dramatic rise in private engineering colleges
(currently more than 1500 in number) has alas come at cost to quality of
education. Undoubtedly, the key reason for the poor quality of education in
these colleges is the poor quality of their faculty. In most colleges, people
with merely undergraduate degrees are allowed to teach – a basic violation of
an education principle that is generally followed – that the teacher for a
degree/class must have acquired higher level of education or knowledge (through
practice).
World over, for technical
education and higher education, teaching faculty with PhDs is preferred. Having
a PhD allows a person to have some maturity as well as provide the ability to
keep abreast with current developments, something that is critical to high
quality education, particularly in technical areas where the technology and
concepts are changing fast. In the
And to satisfy the demand for
PhDs by these institutions, these countries have developed strong and flexible
PhD programs that produce a large number of PhD students. In
Hence, even if our colleges
and universities want to hire PhDs for their faculty positions, they will be
unable to do so as the production of PhDs is very low. This lack of supply of
PhDs for teaching faculty will become even more acute in future as foreign
universities start programs in India in order to tap the huge demand (and with
WTO, it seems this will be allowed even more freely), which will inevitably be
followed by private universities coming into existence. And unless this situation is corrected, colleges
will continue providing low quality education as they will have to work with
lesser qualified faculty, or with faculty who have the necessary degrees but in
non-relevent areas (e.g. having PhD in sciences or
arts to satisfy the PhD requirement and having them teach technical courses.)
So, it is clear that if we
want to improve the quality of education in colleges and universities we must
increase the production of PhDs.
Besides education, there is
another key reason why we must seriously embark upon programs to increase the
production of PhDs. It is clear that large corporations, Indian or
Multinational, are looking at cost efficient ways of doing R&D. And it is
also clear that many consider
If the growth starts taking
place in any significant way, the bottleneck will immediately be the
availability of PhDs. If a corporation wants to set up a 100-person strong
R&D center in IT, it will probably take it many years to get that many
people from within the country. And no corporation wants to wait too long in
today’s business climate – if they take a decision, they want to move fast. And
if they see that their growth plans are not feasible, they may simply decide
not to undertake the venture. Hence, lack of PhDs can easily jeopardize the
potential growth of the highest end of industry – R&D. Of course, as our
own industry houses become larger and globalize, they themselves will require
R&D centers. And we may find that lack of PhDs might force them to start
their centers in other places like
The author has contacted many
organizations that want to grow the R&D activity. And almost all of them
have stated that they have a lot of difficulty finding PhDs for their work.
Hence, many of them are trying to get NRIs back to
Increasing the production of
PhDs, unfortunately, is a slow process. Even if actions are taken now, it is
only after a few years that we will see some results. Hence, it is imperative
that corrective actions are taken as soon as possible. Also, we don’t clearly
want to tackle this problem the same way we handled the problem of engineering
education and do not want to end up with people with degrees but who do not
possess the proper skills expected. We must ensure that the quality does not
suffer in the process.
It is clear, that to
kick-start this process, it is the premier places that will have to increase
their production of PhDs. PhD from these places can then seed the other places
which can then become centers for PhD production in their own right later. But
for now, it will have to be the R&D labs, the IITs,
the NITs, and other premier universities that will
have to do this. To get going, the top 10 places in each discipline should be
identified which should produce about 5 to 10 Ph.D.s each year in each of the
disciplines. If we can do this, then within a few years with some of the
graduates joining educational institutes, quality of other institutes will
increase and then they can themselves become centers for producing Ph.D.s
In places like the IITs, this awareness has been there for a long time and the
lack of increase in PhDs has not been due to candidates not joining the PhD
programs. Hence, besides setting a goal of 10 Ph.D.s per year to be produced in
each discipline by the top places, a major ongoing initiative is needed to
recruit more PhD scholars to achieve this goal. Clearly, some creative, “out of
the box” ideas will have to be evolved.
For example, the traditional input to PhD programs is the recent graduates. These,
unfortunately, are also the hardest to get – in their youth, these students are
not easily persuaded to study for another 4 to 5 years and delay their jobs. It
will help if we increase our source base and, in addition to fresh graduates,
start targeting working people and people who might want to shift from, say,
science to engineering. World over, there are always people who, after working
for a few years, wish to pursue a PhD so they can shift into R&D. In
Clearly, we need to encourage people who are working to pursue PhDs. This will
require a shift in our admissions, requirements, and our approach. First, we
have to assume that these people may be married. The current
fellowships/scholarships are designed to support a single student. It is time
we considered “married student” fellowships, which will carry a stipend that is
sufficient to support a student and his spouse (and perhaps a child). This
fellowship, for example, can be kept as 50% more than the regular stipend, and
can have a suitable HRA, if suitable family accommodation is not provided (they
cannot be expected to live in dormitory.) Essentially, if we create a situation
where we give a message to working people that if you join a PhD program,
during the course of the PhD, you and your family will be able to survive comfortably,
then we might find people taking this step.
Another factor that inhibits
these people from joining the PhD programs is that they are viewed in the same
light as a fresh graduate. Their experience is given no weight and the
requirements for the degree are kept the same. Essentially, instead of viewing
their experience as something positive on which to build on, the current
systems view these as negatives and put such a student to a disadvantage. There
is clearly a need to remedy this – for example by viewing experience as
equivalent to having done some courses and by waiving some other exam-type
requirements, if the person possesses relevant experience. Again, foreign
universities show this kind of flexibility and hence attract such students –
for example, in
There can be other approaches
as well to help increase the Ph.D. student strength. We can encourage cross-migration
with a flexible approach – rather than view the lack of degree in the chosen
area of study as a disadvantage, flexibility can be there to build upon the
existing knowledge. Scholarships for bright students in their undergraduate
education itself if they enroll in Ph.D. program might be another possibility.
A regular survey that shows the demand for Ph.D.s in different sectors and the
expected salary can help highlight the future prospects of doing a Ph.D., which
can help people make more informed choices. Providing support for Ph.D.
scholars to attend international summer schools or workshops can also be
beneficial.
If we can embark upon a drive
to increase the production of PhDs, we can become one of the global
destinations for education. Without this increase, we stand to miss out on the
opportunity of being the R&D center of the world that is presenting itself,
and will continue with the poor quality education that many of the education institutes
are currently providing.
Pankaj Jalote is a Professor of
Computer Science in IIT