Fresh PhD: What to do ?
Gajendra P.S. Raghava
Friday, 31 July 2009 15:51 UTC
A large number of PhD students are confused; What to do after PhD? Few years back answer was simple, 99% good student goes for PDF abroad. It is because PDF abroad was a dream for students due to number of reasons including
i) high salary (comparison to indian salary),
ii) status in society (complexity problem, person is considered superior if working abroad),
iii) exposure (opportunity to work with reputed scientist),
iv) good publications etc.
In the era of Internet, every thing is discussed openly (blogs/forum). Now student understand that PDF abroad also have lot of problems like poor salary, no future, uncertainty etc . In this situation student is quite confuse, its not clear for them what to do after PhD or what is good for them in long run. A fresh student have number of options, following are major options
i) Academic job in india (scientist/professor), earlier this is least preferred. Nowadays this profession also have reasonable salary with stable and tension free life. Only difficulty is to compete globally due number of reasons including working hands are PhD student rather than PDF.
ii) PDF abroad, most preferred option so far, after reading status of PDF on forum/blog, some PhD students feel they are living better life during PhD than PDF abroad.
iii) Joining private company in India, lot of students feel this is black box. Much more insecure than PDF, most of company are not doing great research so their is chance that student will not grow.
This is my personal view based on my experience and my discussions with PhD students. I wants to know from experienced members their view. What is better carrier option for a PhD student in long term.
Updated 31 July 2009 15:56 UTC
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Anonymous
Innovation is needed not only for science but for anything in India to develop; be it police reform, judicial reform or higher education/research reform. It’s also important to remember that condition of higher education and research does depend on overall economic and social prosperity of a country. If you study the history of shifting super powers of science it becomes clearer. Science cannot make you a social or economic superpower but a social-economic power house can make you scientific super power. Check the article, “End of Science super power” (Nature July 2008, pp 412-413).
India has to develop its own system, not just blindly following US or Europe. Currently there is practically no system at all. All the core institutions of democracy (e.g judiciary, police, civil administration etc) need reform. We are listening our policy makers to talk about reform since last 60 years, yet nothing materialized. The same is true for our education and research system. At one point of time our policy makers established many “institutes of excellence”, “world class universities” “to improve our higher education and research”. But now we all know that all such efforts helped us only to go downhill in last 60 odd years. No doubt, there is some improvement in life of some people but that is not sufficient vis-à-vis our competitors (e.g China, South Korea etc). You can have a better picture if you compare number of publications and average quality of publications from China now and how it was 30 years ago. Some people prefer to get satisfaction on that while many others prefer to concentrate on the part that we need better system. That is true for science as well.
In such a situation it’s very hard to change any system by staying within the system. It’s almost impossible to criticize any existing system there and yet remain personally unaffected. It needs extraordinary talent to enforce any change in any sphere of life there. In fact it’s widely believed that economic reform of 1990s was not well planned effort but an absolute necessary to avoid total bankruptcy. By staying outside the system you can do your part, by not directly or personally affected by any effort to bring change there. That’s why there is very little active participation by students/junior faculties from India in this forum. They know the consequences of giving honest opinion in such open forums.
You also can get a glimpse of the situation there in India. Not a single young student or faculty from India writes in this forum with his proper identity. Whenever they write any critical comment against the system, they remain anonymous. All the students or young faculties/PDFs who are little critical about current Indian system are living abroad (and/or anonymous). Does it indicate anything? Yes, it does. Only two well established, senior faculties from India write with their names and one of them always support the current system and try to justify that – if you want to succeed you must accept the present system and then you can try to improve it. Some define “success” by supporting the system simply because they want to consider themselves as “successful”. They think the award they got is justified; the scholarship they got is justified; higher positions they got is justified and so on. They perceive any criticism about the system will not help sustaining that claim. Sometimes identifying and criticizing negative aspects of a system hurts ego of such people who developed and/or sustain the system. It can also be the fear of reprisal from higher authority. Now it’s up to you to decide your own definition and parameters of “success”. That depends on your core value and also will dictate your future course of actions. To become patriotic or able to do something for your own country does not necessarily mean that you have to physically live in that country. -
Anonymous
Rakesh Tuli may not be corrupt but his aides like D.V. Amla is definitely a corrupt scientist. He has published two papers in last 10 years and has been promoted to Scientist G as he is chamcha of Tuli.
Amla recruited another chamcha Indraneel Sanyal on the post of Sci B sidelining many good eligible candidates (Sanyal did not have any paper at the time of recruitment).Apart from this specific case most of the selections were made out of chamchas.
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Anonymous
If what you are telling is true then, as the director, Dr Tuli can not avoid responsibility. He deliberately promoted an un-worthy scientist to Sc-G position. It also indicates that he does not have the willingness and/or courage to prevent the appointment of an undeserving candidate to sc-B position depriving many other better candidates.
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