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India's Engineering Schools Lose Graduates to U.S.
Colleges
By
Shailaja Neelakantan/NEW DELH
Issue
cover-dated May30, 2008
New Delhi — India’s engineering colleges
remain primarily teaching institutions and have not evolved
into vibrant research institutions because only a tiny percentage
of engineering graduates opts to pursue master’s or doctoral
degrees here, says “Engineering Education in India,” a report
scheduled for release on Saturday, according to a local newspaper.
India graduates fewer than 1,000 Ph.D.’s in engineering annually,
despite producing some 240,000 basic engineering graduates every
year, because most of them enter the job market or move to the
United States for advanced education, according to the report,
which was based on a study by Rangan Banerjee and Vinayak P.
Muley, professors at Mumbai’s Indian Institute of Technology.
Even the seven vaunted Indian Institutes
of Technology are unable to keep their best engineering graduates
for doctoral degrees. Only 1 percent of students earning bachelor-of-technology
degrees choose to pursue a master’s degree and only 2 percent
of master’s recipients opt for doctorates. By contrast, Indians
made up 10 percent of the science and engineering Ph.D.’s awarded
in the United States from 1998 to 2001, the report says.
“There is a general perception that
research opportunities and facilities in U.S. are the best,”
Mr. Banerjee is quoted as saying. “Students also manage well-paying
fellowships and are easily absorbed by the industry, which is
not the case in India. Doing a Ph.D. is seen as time-consuming,
and usually students want to take up a job right after their
degree,” he said.
The report recommends that India reverse
the pattern by starting a national Ph.D. program to offer fellowships
of around $600 a month, and industry support for 5,000 fellowships
a year.
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