PhD students and Jobs

Let us take a break from the usual and look at some worldly issues of interest. In India doing a PhD is looked upon as the task of individuals who could do nothing better in life. To add insult to injury after completion of PhD you get pathetic salaries which do not do justice to the fact that you spent a lot more time (at least five years) to reach an employable level as a faculty. Although the scene seems to have improved of late but then you are faced with an interesting question of how many good publications do you have. Certainly a very right question, after all you as a researcher are supposed to show output in the form of papers but the zealots of this theory forget a very crucial point. When the Professors you are working with have not been able to get publications in the top notch journals of their field how in this world can students working under them get the publications easily. Interestingly, professors are right in not getting publications in big journals due to resource crunch and other factors but all those factors don't apply to the PhD students working under same conditions!!! This is amazing hypocrisy.

Next important thing is, as a fresh PhD where do you look for a job, either you look for joining a big brand as a platform for future development with pathetic pay structure (imagine a salary of 28,000 in a city like Mumbai or Delhi with a family to support, and you are highly qualified or any other job !!!!!) or you look to join not so well known but well paying institutes which may be privately run. Again you need to make a trade off in terms of expected future cash flows that could accrue to you as a result of joining a good brand and doing good research in future or getting a decent pay in the short run and may be lesser chance of doing good research and getting drowned in the teaching load. This off course does not take in to account sudden changes in a specific institute's reputation or brand overnight which may change things. But given that average age of a post PhD student is around 30 years, it is likely that the person may actually choose to give a slip to big brand as immediate financial needs are very pertinent.

I hope people at the helm of affairs can realise these issues and decide their policies accordingly. In my personal opinion need of the hour is to get hold of bright PhD candidates as faculties and then incentivise and motivate them to do independent research and then motivate them to take up post Doctoral research after a gap of say 3-5 years. Such an effort will not only help in making teaching jobs more meaningful but also help in improving the research ecosystem in the country.