Back to India: US universities lose sheen
When Bidya Binay Karak decided to get a Ph D. in solar astrophysics, she didn’t consider going to America, the land that — lest we forget — put man on the moon. This, despite the fact that the US is widely upheld as the bastion of astrophysics research. The reason? “Institutes like the IISc [Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore] offer world-class master’s and doctoral programmes,” she says, as a matter of fact.
“There is a drop both in the number and the quality of Ph.D. applications, more noticeably in the last two years.” says Anand Sivasubramaniam, professor of computer science and engineering, Pennsylvania State University (Penn State). “This year, of the more than 700 applications we received from prospective graduate students worldwide, the number of applications from top Indian institutes such as the IITs and IISc was in the single digit.
The number of Ph.D. students pursuing physics at IIT-Bombay has increased steadily, says Urjit A. Yajnik, professor of physics at IIT-Bombay, who is on a sabbatical at McGill University in Canada. The total number of Ph.D.s at IIT-Bombay rose 49% from 1,028 students in 2003-04 to 1,528 in 2009-10. India is also attracting a trickle of top notch scientists from America. “Compared to even three years ago, there are more opportunities for teaching and research in India. We see more post-doctoral fellows in theoretical physics willing to take up jobs in India than in the US,” says Savdeep Sethi, professor of physics at the University of Chicago.
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