According to the All India Survey on Higher Education (AISHE) 2021-22 report, more than 42,000 students registered for PhD programs in the sciences. Some 7,200 got their PhD degrees.
The PhD is often the lifetime work of a researcher. Many drop out — some estimates put drop-out figures at as high as 40%. And some hang on even if they lost interest mid-course purely for the sake of getting the degree.
With the unfamiliarity of the PhD coursework and rigorous review meetings, the PhD program remains an ordeal for many. It is common for students to become disinterested and leave the program midway or change their supervisor. All of this takes mental health for a toss, and students lose valuable years of their lives.
Many students experience delays in getting their fellowships for months on end. Hence, it is not surprising that they lose interest, as most of them are in the age group of 25-30 and may have family responsibilities. However, this is just one of the many problems that create hardships for PhD students.
Selection and coursework
While different institutes have different selection processes, most conduct an entrance exam or select students for a PhD in the sciences based on a GATE score, then conduct interviews, after which a specific number of students are offered PhD positions within the institute. A new PhD student is typically required to complete coursework at the beginning of a program, the duration of which varies among different institutes but usually ranges from one to two years.
Some institutes also administer a comprehensive exam at the end of the coursework to assess students’ subject knowledge and research capability. Students commence their PhD work only after completing the necessary assessments.
Coursework aims to create a foundation, preparing students for their research work. However, it is often considered a mere ‘requirement’ towards a doctoral degree, where students study to obtain grades.
Unlike bachelor’s or master’s courses, PhD coursework requires thorough reading and preparation, delivering seminars on different topics, and also includes courses on communication skills. Seminar courses help students learn the literature review process, while courses on communication skills are tailored to train students in writing papers, reports, and presenting their work.
Anish* defended his thesis in December 2023 from a prestigious Indian institute in chemistry and is now working as a postdoctoral fellow in the U.S. Anish found the coursework helpful, as most courses are ‘bridging courses’ that help close knowledge gaps. He added that a course in instrumentation helped students understand the principles and workings of laboratory equipment. Such courses are immensely useful to students who come after a master’s with little exposure to experimental techniques, especially in handling laboratory equipment independently.
The PhD program in most places is structured – a research proposal seminar at the end of the 1st year, annual progress seminars at the end of every subsequent year, and a synopsis seminar after four or five years, where students present their doctoral research and later publish it in the form of a thesis, with research publications in peer-reviewed journals. Students finally defend their thesis before external examiners, and thesis committee members and are awarded a PhD upon successful completion.
Why do PhD students lose interest?
Senior researchers are concerned that PhD programs in India have deviated far from being a ‘doctorate in philosophy’– where the scholar has mastered the art of thinking critically. “Previously, students were expected to have a wider view of their general area. It has evolved to becoming specialists and sometimes technical specialists with an extremely narrow view”, says Prof. Sandhya Koushika, cellular neurobiologist and principal investigator at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR), Mumbai.
Students may join a laboratory right after their master’s, where rote learning is still common. In fact, most students join a PhD program just because it is the ‘next obvious step’ after a master’s program, but may not know what doing research is like on a day-to-day basis or the true trajectory of a PhD program. While most master’s students are expected to have worked on a research project before joining, the experience of working in a research laboratory is entirely different.
A PhD program is a mixture of being both– a student as they are learning, and an employee as they get a stipend. However, unclear expectations or gaps in communication can make students feel vulnerable. “The supervisor needs you to do something at that one particular time, and it absolutely has to be done. Sometimes this understanding doesn’t work in the favor of a student, and we feel like we could be taken for granted,” says Prasanna Simha, a PhD student at the University of Transdisciplinary Health Sciences and Technology (TDU), Bengaluru.
A few years ago, Prasanna worked as a junior research fellow (JRF) in a prestigious institute in Bengaluru. The supervisor expressed interest in enrolling him for a PhD and assigned a few projects. While working on one of the projects, he was abruptly asked to leave the program, as he didn’t know specific skills that students usually learn on the go.
Without a fellowship and a secure position, he was left in the lurch. “I felt at that point that the professor wanted me to be prepared to know a lot of things already even before I got to know about them for the first time,” says Prasanna. Fortunately, he could join another laboratory at TDU for a PhD program, where he had worked earlier.
Prof. Koushika explains how she leads discussions with students. “The question that I often ask young people is, are you interested in science? Why do you want to do a PhD? Sometimes, you can see from the answers that they have a very romantic view (of doing science). And their romantic view comes from listening to Nobel laureates or other famous scientists.”
Importantly, research advances with debate and criticism, and not all students are comfortable with this process. Constructive criticism by experts and peers is an integral part of doing science. Progress in the lab may not always move forward as planned. Experiments fail; at times, an entire idea may fail, leading to uncertainty. “The levels of uncertainty for a lot of students don’t align with a romantic view of science that they hold,” says Prof. Koushika.
Students sometimes feel stuck and unmotivated as techniques do not work consistently or projects don’t give the expected results. It requires months of revisiting their hypotheses, re-designing experiments, and often starting afresh. But that’s how science works in practice, and it should not dampen a student’s spirits long-term. “Sometimes, you might still not know the answer, and that should be okay. That should not stand in the way of awarding a PhD degree, because that is also science”, says Prasanna.
Despite the uncertainty, supervisors, thesis committee members, and peers should work to build a strong support system for a student. How a student navigates their PhD depends on the kind of feedback and support they get from their mentors and peers that should help build their resilience.
“The unstructuredness of a PhD is like a marathon. You need to figure out what gels with you and keeps you going. But what keeps you going comes down to the people who hand you water and refreshments”, says Anish. He adds that the annual progress review meetings can be helpful, provided committee members give honest and constructive feedback.
The ordeal is over. Now what?
The next career step after a PhD is often to get post-doctoral experience in laboratories within or outside India, and eventually, apply for a faculty position. Today, careers in communication, industry, education, etc., are open to or may require those with a PhD degree. Many students who aspire for non-academic careers sometimes disregard their PhD training, using it merely as a stepping stone to get the degree.
Discussions on post-PhD careers outside academia happen rarely. When they do, “the discussions come at the end, like the third year or the fourth year, of the PhD program”, says Dr. Vishal Govind Rao, Associate Professor, Dept. of Chemistry at IIT Kanpur. Even if students find interest in non-academic jobs, they have to be carefully oriented. “A PhD is not just about publishing; it is a training for one’s lifetime,” he adds. Independent thinking, problem-solving, and communication skills learned during PhD training are immensely helpful, even in non-academic careers.
Publish or perish culture
The success of a PhD student is typically viewed in terms of the number of papers published and the journals in which they are published, with insufficient weight given to scholarly thinking. Typically, one or two publications in peer-reviewed journals are necessary for getting a PhD degree from most institutes. Publications are more than a checkbox where the number and quality of publications determine career trajectories. However, the pressure to publish can lead to ethical violations such as data fabrication and plagiarism to complete the mandatory graduation requirements.
Scholarly publications are the yardsticks by which academic success is measured. Dr. Govind Rao says, “Publication is the currency in academia. It gets you the funding, the collaborations.” He is concerned that in many laboratories, PhD students are only trained to generate data, while supervisors design the projects and experiments, write the research articles, and respond to reviewers’ comments in the peer-review process. This leaves no room for students to become independent thinkers and scholars. It’s not just the publication but thinking about the philosophical aspect of research that is equally important, says Dr. Govind Rao.
Writing a research paper, submitting manuscripts, and addressing comments from peer review are skills that students learn on the job. Several institutes offer courses in communication. Despite this basic training, navigating the publication process can be challenging, especially for the first time. Yet, it is essential that students learn to write a research paper on their own, says Dr. Govind Rao.
A supervisor’s career mainly depends on the number and quality of publications from their laboratory. It becomes the ‘norm’ for some supervisors to write the research papers themselves, taking away a training opportunity for a student. “Much of what the students do becomes integrally tied, especially in India, to the career of the principal investigator (supervisor) who leads the group”, says Prof. Koushika.
Reforms and solutions
Prof. Koushika suggests that a student’s productivity should not be tied to the supervisor’s career. Decoupling the two could ease the pressure on students to a large extent. She suggests a system with two tracks– one focused on doing PhD in the traditional way, geared towards an academic career, and the other focused only on employment outside academic research.
The latter could be a straight track, without comprehensive exams and coursework, and students could focus on developing transferable skills, perhaps even bypassing publishing papers to get a degree. Alternatively, we need a ‘non-student’ cadre of scientific humanpower who can work especially on projects with long incubation times.
Prof. Koushika recognizes that the ‘two-track system’ may not solve the problem but strongly expresses the need to address it. “We need many more ideas because otherwise young people end up being very upset and cynical about their PhD journey, when it should be a journey of discovery and joy.”
(*Name has been changed)
(The author is a science communicator, educator and facilitator, and works as a Consultant with TNQ Foundation. She holds a PhD degree from the Dept. of Biosciences and Bioengineering, IIT Bombay)
Published – April 15, 2025 09:08 pm IST