IITs see lowest enrolment for doctoral programs

MUMBAI: Several schools at various IITs have reported the lowest number of candidate applications for PhD programs. The declining trend in Ph.D. interest began in 2021 but is most obvious now, according to academicians at India's leading STEM universities, who claim the trend is becoming established.

The Covid years disrupted education, and for a year afterward, their effects were still noticed. A highly esteemed professor at the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay noted in a working paper that the number of Ph.D. applications does not appear to be increasing at the IITs and the IISc.

IIT-B professor D Manjunath, in his widely circulated paper titled 'Engineering PhDs in Premier Institutions: What's the Slope?', remarked, "There is a noticeable decline in interest in pursuing a PhD at a time when these institutions claim record faculty strengths and research funding and with an increasing need for their intellectual resources."

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The majority of institutions have two Ph.D. admission cycles each year, one in May and one in December, with the December cycle receiving much fewer applications than the May cycle. A decrease in applications was reported in the paper for the main engineering fields of chemical, civil, computer science, electrical, and mechanical engineering at IITs such those in Mumbai, Chennai, Hyderabad, Gandhinagar, and the Indian Institute of Science.

However, it's interesting to know that the All India Survey on Higher Education reports a rise in enrollment in institutions abroad, which they speculate may be because many of our prospective students are choosing alternative, possibly easier avenues to obtain the coveted Ph.D. degree.

There are more reasons for the reduction in applications at top colleges, including students leaving the country, many of whom land government employment, and a general decline in master program quality. Many master's programs, which serve as feeders for Ph.D. programs, are "now in dire straits." By the end of the first semester, the number of students who enter the program in July, the commencement of the academic year, would have fallen to around half to one-third of the total. The morale of those students who "could not," as opposed to "did not," quit the program is being negatively impacted by this attrition, and it appears that the former group is in the majority. As a result, these master's programs aren't what they once were, according to the report.

Professor Manjunath in his report noted that numerous schools were considering "canceling" or "severely downgrading" their master's programs. Removing them would unavoidably affect PhD applicants' long-term production. It is essential to protect and revive these programs to keep a consistent stream of quality students in the Ph.D. pipeline.

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