Archive for the ‘Engineering PhD’ Category
We will double intake of PhD students: IIT-Delhi Director
More than 300 students and faculty members showcased their technical know-how and craftsmanship at the Innovation Exhibition organised by the Indian Institute of Technology-Delhi (IIT-D). The institute’s Director, R K Shevgaonkar, spoke about the exhibition and research opportunities for students in India:
How is such an exhibition relevant to those outside the precincts of this institute?
This kind of an exhibition is proof of the extensive research done by students and faculty members at IIT. There are lots of science students and aspiring engineers who would be interested. The second aim is to invite young people to try their hand at research and development in India.
There is a growing belief among students that research opportunities are limited in India, which makes the West seem more lucrative. How is that ever likely to change?
That’s not true. This mindset is now changing. Earlier, in a class of 50, almost 20 students would come to us for recommendations because they were applying abroad. That number has now come down to five. India is one of the best places to carry out research work because a PhD student is given infinite opportunities to explore his field of study.
Do you think that more funds need to be pumped by the government into research in Indian universities?
Money is definitely required. But the Ministry of Human Resource Development [MHRD] gives funding for the basic infrastructure. The funding for research is usually provided by other agencies, such as the Department of Biotechnology and the Department of Space or Department of Atomic Energy. Students should actually take a look at the CSIR or DRDO labs to get a fair idea of the extent of research that can be undertaken in India.
So what role are the IITs playing to encourage students to take up research?
From the next academic year, we will double the intake of students in PhD courses. Currently, about 200 PhD scholars graduate every year. We are going to increase that number to 400 from next year and we hope to increase it further to 1,000.
There were complaints that there was a massive shortfall of teaching staff. How prudent is it to invite more PhD scholars when you don’t have the required number of teachers?
That complaint has come from undergraduate students. Originally, the teacher-student ratio was 1:10. Now, because of the OBC expansion, the number of students has significantly increased. We are trying to fill that gap and are going to go to the US soon to recruit some faculty members.
Source: Hindustan Times, April 22, 2012
IITs’ PhD Jinx: BTechs command higher pay
Foreign universities that would come scouting for young teachers to the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) were conspicuously missing this recruitment season. But a range of private and deemed Indian universities from across the country did land up offering hardly attractive pay scales defined under the Sixth Pay Commission.
When they were pitted against the big guns – the consulting and finance offers – the IITs realized that the PhD jinx continues to haunt them. Every tech school recorded a higher average salary figure for their BTechs as compared to their PhD fellows, most of who joined research labs or signed up for teaching positions.
“It’s a trend that continues. The average salary on campus is Rs. 700,000, but the average salary for PhD candidates is less than that of the BTechs,” said an IIT-Bombay official. The scenario is same on every campus. The slump in the average salary for PhDs also aggravated as universities from West Asia that came shopping for faculty did not turn up this year.
In the last two years, Al-faisal University, Saudi Arabia (which offered an annual compensation to the tune of Rs. 1.9 million apart from housing and other facilities), Texas A&M University, Indian School of Business-Hyderabad, were among the education providers that visited IITs and paid salaries comparable to industry. This year, most IITs saw a desi (local) crowd as institutes like ICFAI, SRM University, Tamil Nadu; Saroj Education Group, Lovely Professional University, Rajiv Gandhi University of Knowledge, Vigyan University, K L University and Manipal University took a handful of students.
Every IIT saw a fall in students signing up for teaching posts. At IIT-Kanpur, 45 students joined educational institutes last year; this time around the number stood at 32, said Ramkumar Janakarajan, Placement Head. Annual compensation remained almost the same as last year. Most of the universities offered between Rs. 300,000 and Rs. 600,000 a year.
IIT-Kharagpur’s Placement Head S K Srivastava said 67 master’s students and 15 PhD candidates took up teaching jobs this year. “The number was higher last year when more educational institutes had visited the campus.” But several research firms, Srivastava added, had offered better salaries to PhD students this year.
IIT-Delhi’s Placement Head Kushal Sen said it probably wasn’t correct to compare the salaries of BTechs, MTechs and PhDs as they all took up varied job profiles. “The salary that an MTech student gets from a core engineering firm cannot match the package that a consulting firm would offer a BTech.”
Sure, but the placements again drove home the point that the BTechs at IITs managed to grab the best deals. In 2005-06, Rangan Banerjee and Vinayak Muley, in their report on Engineering Education in India had mentioned this irony that existsonly on Indian campuses.
“The average MTech and PhD salary is lower than the average BTech salary in India. But the ratio of average starting salary of graduates to masters and doctorates for MIT, USA and University of Illinois Urbana Champaign, USA shows that the average masters’ salary is 22-26% higher than the bachelors’; the doctorates’ salary is 45-58% higher than the bachelors’.”
Source: The Economic Times (Online Edition), July 30, 2011
Tech companies increase PhD hiring for R&D units
Internet giant Yahoo’s recent job notification cries out loud: “Scientists wanted”. To meet its requirements in India, the company has even decided to launch a talent hunt with its Yahoo PhD Coop programme in collaboration with major Indian institutes. Yahoo said the programme will allow its employees to work full-time and do research under the guidance of institute faculty on topics of mutual interest.
Other multinationals like Intel, AMD, Applied Materials, IBM, Bell Labs, Microsoft and Google, among others, are also queing up to hire PhD scholars for their global research units located in India. AMD on its part, has been tapping the engineering colleges – Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) and Indian Statistical Institute (ISI), Kolkata – for the last two years to meet its requirements.
AMD said with an in crease in architectural level work in India, PhDs are in demand. “AMD has doubled the PhD hiring and looking for more. The company usually hires PhDs as interns and grooms them accordingly. In some cases it gives funding to universities for research and faculty or PhD students work on research,” said Shiva Gowni, Corporate Vice President (Design Engineering), AMD India.
Rastogi, who has published over 125 research papers, with 40 patents to his name, said: “We already have a Key Scientific Challenge (KSC) programme where the company provides US$ 5,000 unrestricted research seed fund to PhD students. Every year at least two Indian PhD students are selected for KSC, where participation comes from across the globe.”
Even computer chip giant Intel is planning to increase the number of PhD recruitments in India from eight last year to a double-digit figure this year. Preethi Madappa, Senior HR of Intel said: “We have even launched a PhD programme for our employees in collaboration with IIT Kanpur. Further, to help retain the talent we hire, we ensure that they are given maximum exposure by allowing PhD candidates to work with Intel’s R&D centres in Israel and the US.”
According to the IITs, traditionally, people have been pursuing PhDs to be in academics, but with the technology firms increasingly approaching the IITs and IISc, seeking talent for their R&D functions, more and more PhDs have seen this as an opportunity to earn better and join the corporate sector. “While you are working with companies, not only the motivation level is higher but there are multiple avenues for employment too,” said the placement chairperson at one of the IITs.
According to industry experts, with companies paying anywhere between Rs. 600,000-800,000 per annum they are bound to be the preferred destination for many. IITs on the other hand, pay Rs. 300,000 per annum (there are however, benefits which are not monetised). Probably, this is why Applied Materials, service and equipment provider to panel display, semiconductor industry, ensures that when PhDs join them, they do so at a higher salary range and at a higher grade level compared to fresh graduates.
“We do give credit to the fact that they have worked on their thesis over the past two to three years and we do count that as work experience. Also, PhDs are always a targeted set of people that we go after. Our hiring manger identifies certain projects that the candidate will need to work on, projects that need the competency level of a PhD,” said Abhay Singh, Director HR, Applied Materials. Applied Materials, which is building the India site as a research centre for the organisation, realised that it needs to begin tapping the higher education talent in India and hire PhDs almost two years ago.
At Bangalore-based Bell Labs, 70 per cent of the staff is PhD. Nurturing its own talent pool, the company also provides research internships to BTech, MS and PhD students regularly and also has a graduate student fellowship programme at IIT Delhi for PhD students.
IBM prefers hiring researchers for computer science and related areas. “PhD recruits who want to work on real-world problems leading to solutions that make a direct and measurable impact are hired by IBM for 12 years now,” said Rangarajan VA, recruitment leader, IBM India. IBM runs student internship programmes and PhD Fellowships in India .
Companies like Microsoft allow its researchers to work closely with the academia on various research projects and teach courses at some of the premier research institutions in the country. “Speaking specifically of computer science field, the country currently produces less than 100 PhDs every year, which is just not enough to feed the demand that will be forthcoming from the industry as well as the fast growing education sectors,” said Vidya Natampally, Director (Strategy), Microsoft Research India.
At present IITs produce around 1000 PhDs every year against the around 8000–9000 PhDs in engineering and technology scholars annually from the US and China.
Source: Business Standard, June 30, 2011
Hike IIT fees four times: Committee
Sticking to its earlier recommendation of increasing the tuition fees for the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) four times from the current Rs. 50,000 to Rs. 200,000-250,000 per year per student, thegovernment-appointed Anil Kakodkar committee has suggested the substantial rise in fee at the undergraduate level. This would be reasonable considering the high demand for IIT graduates and the salary that an IIT B.Tech. is expected to get and the capital investment per student is estimated at Rs.2 million, the panel says.
Currently, around 500,000 engineering graduates come out of engineering colleges. This number would cross one million in three to four years from now and only about 1 per cent of IIT B.Tech.s do Ph.D. at the IITs, the report says. The committee has therefore suggested that each IIT should progressively grow to have around 1,200 faculty (from around 500 today) and closer to 12,000 students with maximum growth coming from an enhanced number of Ph.D. students. Further, the committee has suggested setting up of five more IITs so that the number of IIT Ph.D. graduates scales up to 10,000 per year. At present, there are 16 IITs in the country.
In another important decision, the committee has suggested the retention of time-tested parameters like a certain faculty student ratio of 1:10 and PG:UG ratio of 1:1 or higher. The committee has suggested a minimum of 0.6 Ph.D.s per faculty annually, eventually reaching 1 Ph.D. per faculty.
On this basis, the committee is aiming at scaling the IIT system to 16,000 faculty and 160,000 total student strength (with 40,000 at the Ph.D. level, 40,000 at the Masters level and 80,000 UG students) by around the year 2020. Each year, then, the IIT system will admit 10,000 Ph.D.s.
The committee has also recommended an Executive M.Tech. programme for about 10,000 working professionals from industry through live video classes to enhance the knowledge base. Towards enhancing autonomy, the panel has proposed that each institute be fully governed by its board of governors including aspects like financial planning and expenditure rules, faculty remuneration, fees and number of faculty and staff. The board should have one representative each from the Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD) and the state governments, alumni and faculty.
Significantly, the committee has suggested each institute to subject itself to a comprehensive institution review by an internationally eminent group once every five years. “Such reviews which will be overseen by the IIT Council, will have focus on quality, programmes, their direction and size, working of the institutions and suggestions for change, including new initiatives,” the report adds.
Source: The Financial Express, May 14, 2011
Higher Education News and Views 