Attracting quality students to pursue doctoral degree in computer science is one of the major challenges faced by India's top technical institutes due to lack of lucrative scholarships and fellowships, according to a survey.
The survey, conducted by Prof Pankaj Jalote, Director of the Indraprastha Institute of Information Technology (Delhi), says PhD production in India in the field of computer science has been "an issue of concern over the last many years."
"The two most common issues were problems in attracting good quality PhD students and lack of financial support in terms of fellowships/scholarships and grants for travel to conferences," the survey, conducted by Jalote for the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), says.
"If we look at the stipend provided during the PhD, the highest was Rs 25,000, minimum was Rs 14,000, and the average stipend that a PhD student can expect in India is Rs 18,418. The median stipend is Rs 18,000," the survey says.
Jalote was however optimistic that the number of PhDs in computer science will grow in the next five years.
The survey, which estimated that the PhD production in academic year 2011-12 was around 125, says the PhD production is likely to grow gradually to about 225 per year in about five years.
According to Jalote, the purpose of the study was to collect reliable data on PhD production in computer science in India, and then use it to identify useful trends and analyse these trends.
"Top institutions like IITs, NITs, JNU and IIITs were included in the survey," he says.
On areas of research prominent among the PhD students in India, the survey says 'Theory and Algorithms', 'Networks' and 'Information Assurance/Security' were the top three choices of PhD students, who completed their PhDs between August 1, 2011 and July 31, 2012.
