The Hindu Business Line : Devalued Ph.Ds

THERE was once a time when award of a Ph.D. was a special honour worthy of being reported in bold headlines in newspapers. Nowadays Indian universities are churning out Ph.Ds by the thousands every year in every conceivable discipline.

In one university randomly selected, the number of Ph.Ds awarded as of November 2005 was 1,756, of which as many as 967 went to science (913), engineering and technology (47), and medicine (7).

Despite such high score, why is it that the number of papers by Indian Ph.D. awardees published in reputed international journals devoted to their specialisation is few and far between?

What explains India's poor record in the number of patents secured for new inventions (forget the Nobel prizes)? The explanation, perhaps, is that a disturbing proportion of candidates manage to obtain Ph.Ds for theses which do not measure up to any substantive and definitive research worth the name, and certainly come nowhere near criteria insisted upon in Universities in advanced countries which have a brand image as centres of higher learning.

This is because, in India, it seems that it is not incumbent on a Ph.D. candidate to undertake any original or pioneering work leading to insightful contribution to the corpus of existing knowledge.

A casual look at the titles of theses makes one feel that anything goes as regards the choice of the subject for the so-called research (which at best comprises surveys, interviews and lifting of tables and quotation of passages from other publications).

It can be no more than an evaluation of the roles played by a movie star or the content analysis of the novels of a popular author.

Study of stress among women executives in industrial organisations or the nature of impulsive buying by consumers can also fetch a Ph.D., not to mention "a comparative study of knowledge, attitude and practices of urban and rural mothers in weaning infants and the acceptability and effectiveness of a monocereal weaning diet (ragi kheer) in a selected... community"!

How external examiners also fall for this sort of viscous stuff is a matter for wonder. Given this bleak background, the UGC's clarion call for doubling the number of Ph.Ds in the next 10 years is premature.

The aim should rather be to evolve stringent standards for the entire process of approval of research topics and their evaluation.

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