Experiences
Why is poor teaching and research conditions in IITs?
by Prasoon Kumar (May 27th 2017)
One of the dreams of most of the research scholars pursuing Ph.D. in IITs is to become a faculty in one of the elite universities in India. However, as per my experience and discussions with friends in different IITs, 1/10 or even less number of Ph.D. candidates passing out of IITs are able to find a position in Academia. There are around 2000 candidates passing out every year in science and technology from different IITs but the problem of faculty shortage remains in these IITs. So, the big question which arises in my mind -" why can't the above 2000 scholar be absorbed in IITs or elite institutions?".
The IIT authorities reply that they do not get quality researchers from Ph.D. candidates who have passed out of Indian universities. I do agree about the abysmally low quality of researchers in India. However, how come the Ph.D. scholars, could not be considered for a faculty position in IITs after they pass out of IIT system but the same were considered meritorious enough to be taken as a Ph.D. candidate in IITs during their admission. This means to me that they were intelligent enough to learn research/teaching at IITs but do not get enough learning to make them eligible for being absorbed as faculty in one of the IITs. I can agree that 100% of all the Ph.D. candidate who passes out of IIT system are not meritorious enough to be absorbed as faculty in IIT system. But, 2-3% is also a very low percentage of Ph.D. scholars who find a position in IITs and that too after 2-4 years of postdoctoral training in some prestigious American/European institutions. This brings me to a very burning question about the quality of Ph.D. scholars in IIT system, one of the finest universities in India and their training methodology adopted by these universities. Are the students pursuing Ph.D. in IITs are not worthy enough to be considered for a faculty position in elite Indian universities or the IITs consider themselves incapable of providing better training to produce future researchers/professors of our country or they are primarily meant for producing teaching workforce for tier 3/4 colleges in India? I do not know the answer but would like to know the mission and vision of IITs for generating doctorates in India. I am not talking about what is displayed on the mission/vision page of IITs website but what is being practiced there. There is something or other is wrong either with the Ph.D. candidates recruitment process or in their training process which forces us to look upon the western world for our faculty recruitment and having less faith in our education/research system.
One of the reasons which I can say with my experience that majority of the faculties at IITs consider only students who have got admission through IITJEE to be worthy enough to become future leaders. More specifically, the students who have secured higher CPI/CGPA in the semester examination and are toppers in class. Even the people in education ministry also believe that students with only higher CPI/CGPA (Toppers) should be promoted to pursue a doctoral degree with a higher salary to overcome the shortage of faculties in elite institutions in India[1]. If such is the case, why are they recruiting other students to pursue a doctoral degree in India if they believe that they are good for nothing? These students are just taken to work for enhancing a career of the faculties exchange of peanuts with feeding/lodging. Even the IIT management could do less to place them in some decent organization after their graduation. In some cases, instead of empowering the students, IIT system have just ripped them of their confidence and self-worth.
As far as my knowledge, there is no standard criteria in IITs through which every Ph.D. candidate has to pass through before he/she should be conferred with the Ph.D. degree within a stipulated period of time. One of the essential criteria is the requisite CGPA which every candidate must attain to continue in the program. Other criteria are 1 international conference or journal or patent publications and most important, cordial relationship with the supervisor. Apart from these, everything is quite subjective and there is huge variability in terms of skills of Ph.D. scholars. There is no specialized training to generate the future researchers of our country. Majorly the process followed is slogging on a piece of unstructured, ill-defined problem to generate results that can be anyhow published in an international journal and accepted by peers. The emphasis is majorly on the results and not in the process of training of Ph.D. scholars in a majority of cases. Furthermore, there is no structured training for Ph.D. candidates in research aptitude and critical thinking, problem definition, research methodology and experiment design, data analysis, written and oral skills, presentation and planning skills, basic computational and mathematical skills, research management, team management, time management, resource management, material management, ethics, leadership, teaching, mentoring/guiding and others. I admit that if on a 10 point scale, a Ph.D. candidate has to be ranked for the above skills, 95% of Ph.D. scholars from even from IITs will be below 4 or less, leave apart the other institutions in India. Therefore, I envisage that this might be the reason for the poor placement of Ph.D. scholars in IITs and reluctant attitude of the IITs to absorb their candidates as faculties.
Therefore, the quality of a Ph.D. scholar is highly dependent on the supervisor and the lab in which is he/she is working. The trajectory of growth of his/her career is dependent on the mentor under whom they attained their training. Thus, I advise future candidates to choose a mentor/guide and do not get trapped by the tag of institutions.
Reference
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/home/education/news/To-fill-IIT-faculty-gaps-PhD-entry-for-BTechs/articleshow/53802875.cms
My 1st Experience of applying for funding with a government organization
by Prasoon Kumar (May 19th, 2017)
Have you ever applied for government academic funding in India?
The funding situation in India is improving for an applied research and impetus is being given to the research and development activities that are going to yield product and services in near future ( visit DST, DBT, DIT and others to know more about funding).
When I was in the 3rd year of my Ph.D., I applied for SYST ( Scheme for Young Scientists and Technologists). A Mater's degree was sufficient to be eligible to apply for funding. I applied to the scheme with my project titled - " Design and fabrication of microfluidics-based extracorporeal membrane oxygenators (ECMO)" probably in the month of May or June 2015. I deliberately chose a project related to a biomedical device for 2 reasons: 1) The area of biomedical is receiving lots of attention these days and 2) My area of interest lies in the biomedical field. I wrote the project proposal and submitted it online. However, I was also required to send a hard-copy of the proposal to the concerned organization through speed post or courier. Isn't it weird? Somehow, I managed to submit my form in both formats before the deadline. Thereafter, it was mentioned on the website that the students of selected proposals would be apprised through the mail within 2 weeks. I did not receive any mail for the next two months. I lost all hope of their reply after three email reminders.
After a period of 10 months, in March 2016, I got their reply that my proposal has been shortlisted among top 30 finalists and I was supposed to submit the detailed project proposal within the next 15 days. As I did not have any permanent position in academia, I was supposed to arrange some position in Academia and get the approval of concerned authority for carrying out research if selected. Thus, in order to avail funding from the government, one must have some sort of position in academia, either as a scientist or professor. Merely having a brilliant idea and skills to execute the project is not enough. Further, the academic setting should have all the infrastructure to execute the project. Therefore, I collaborated with my friend, Dr. Rajesh Vasita, Assistant Professor at the Central University of Gujarat. Eventually, after a lot of paperwork, I successfully submitted my proposal in the required format to the concerned authorities. After 15 days, they called for presentation in New Delhi before the panel of the jury from industry and academia on 12th of April, 2016. Moreover, they again needed two hard copies of the proposal to be brought in person when appearing for presentation and interview. I wondered what would they do with 3-4 copies of the proposal. The best part of going for the presentation was that they were reimbursing the only shortest AC-2 tier fare, although they announced the date of presentation only 10 days before the actual date of presentation, expecting IRCTC to be fair and cooperative with all the participants residing in any part of India. So, many candidates had to book flights to New Delhi to avoid missing an opportunity. I too booked a flight and came to Delhi for presentation. However, due to my 11th-hour attitude, I planned on getting my documents printed after arriving in Delhi, which was around 10:30 PM. Fortunately, cities like Delhi don't sleep until later in the night and I could get the print-out of my documents in Hauz Khas area of Delhi.
Early morning by 8:00 AM, I reached the venue as directed in the mail by authorities. When I reached there, I found out that I was the youngest and least qualified candidate going to present my project proposal. Most of the people were doctorates with 2-3 years of teaching and research experience at some recognized universities. There were about 13 people to be interviewed that day who had come from remote corners of India. The process of presentation started in a closed room format by 10:00 AM and went on until 2:00 PM. I was the second last person to present my project. When I started my project presentation, 5 out of 8 jury members looked disinterested and tired. Moreover, as I began with my very 1st slide, a jury member asked me to skip the slides and just talk about the technical idea and reason for it to be chosen for funding. They hardly allowed me to defend my project in the first place and were quite skeptical about the budget that I demanded. Finally, they asked me to look for other competitive products in the market and improve my proposal. Although the presentations were done sequentially, they did not offer our travel reimbursement just after a candidate's presentation but kept us waiting until all the presentations were over by all the candidates. At the end, many candidates had to just hurry for airport and railway station and just managed to catch their respective trains or flights. I cannot comment on whether it was a good or bad experience but it was my first experience with government bodies for a grant application.
Advice to budding and aspiring Biotech/Biomed/Bioengg. professionals
Earlier there were life scientists - genetics, cell and molecular biology, biochemistry, microbiology, biophysics and others whose major aim was to unravel the mysteries of life through a basic and fundamental research. The area of biochemical engineering, medical equipment, implants were taken care by core engineering department like chemical, electrical and mechanical engineering. However, with the advent of human genome project, nanotechnology, polymer engineering, recombinant DNA technology and others, there started mushrooming of biotech/bioengg. as a subject in schools, colleges and universities in India without being backed by core engineering and science branches. This lead to a substandard curriculum, teaching, teachers and finally, highly under skilled students. Although the complexity of subjects in biotech and bioengg. increased due to introduction life science, the pedagogy of rot learning continued. These finally lead to poor quality of biotech student who were hardly equipped with knowledge and skill to face the challenges of biotech and biomedical industries. In parallel, due to the involvement of huge investment in setting a product/service based biotech companies, only a handful of companies came into existence to absorb large volume of students generated by Indian academia. This resulted in imbalance between the demand and supply of labour in biotech/bioengg/biomed domain. Thus, resulting in abysmally low employment in biotech sector. Therefore, one must consolidate on the fundamental science and core engineering branches during their under graduation and then they should choose the any path in biotech/biomed/bioengg sector. I think basic undergraduate degree should be in fundamental science and core engineering department. Then post graduate and PhD degree should be in biotechnology, bioengineering and biomedical engineering. Then career options are scientific writers, scientists in govt and Pvt, entrepreneurship, consultancy, IPR firms, medical device manufacturing companies, technical sales and marketing, tech support in companies, hospitals and academia, start-ups, co-founders, facility managers, business development in incubator.