Undergraduate research training in India
February 19th, 2007
Through an opinion piece in The Hindu, Prof Gautam R. Desiraju argues that an important reason for India’s lag behind China in terms of scientific output is the lack of research infrastructure at the undergraduate level.
A major area of investment in Chinese universities is the upgrading of undergraduate teaching labs. We spend almost nothing on this front even as we stuff up a few “prestige” institutes with costly equipment. But there will be a real pay-off only if we invest in training young people in the universities well. This is where China is correctly placing its money, and this is where we are totally off track.
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[T]he number of PhD students per institution is roughly the same in China and India with each IIT, IISc, Hyderabad University or CSIR lab having around 100 chemistry PhD students. So in terms of efficiency, each of our students is far less efficient than his or her Chinese counterpart. It means our students are not well trained at the M.Sc. level and this, in turn, goes back to the B.Sc. (where much of the trouble begins).
So in terms of efficiency, each of our students is far less efficient than his or her Chinese counterpart. It means our students are not well trained at the M.Sc. level and this, in turn, goes back to the B.Sc. (where much of the trouble begins).
While not in total agreement with the article, I believe that infrastructural support for undergraduate research training in Indian universities should be invested in. Such supports exist, to varying degrees depending on the campus and the department, at the Indian Institute of Technologies. Extending it to other universities can provide a number of benefits, such as: a more rounded undergraduate education; inculcating a feeling for real scientific research methods (as opposed to routine laboratory courses); and possibly creating a pool of talented research individuals that can be drawn upon for direct employment or training for a potential Biotechnology boom in the country. Of course, it will also mean a better training for those thinking about a future career in science.
Now, as my co-blogger Confused correctly pointed out , very few students at the undergrad level in India are even interested in performing research or consider it as a long-term career goal. Of course, an academic research career is hardly sexy compared to that of a MBA in pure monetary terms. Additionally, the Biotechnology industry in India is still at a nascent stage where it cannot offer the industrial employment base of IT.
The first is not a problem unique to India – the world over, researchers are paid less than MBAs (academics, even less). However, a large proportion of academics are there mainly due to a passion for science – not for the money. But currently in India, there is hardly any mechanism to even raise awareness about the potentials of a scientific career among students. As far as my knowledge goes, the only scheme that encourages research experience at the undergraduate level in India is DST’s Jawaharlal Nehru Summer Fellowship. During my student days, the few people I noticed choosing (as opposed to forced into through failure in engineering/medical entrance examinations) were those whose parents were scientists themselves, and therefore arguably were more informed of such a career. So undergraduate research laboratories could potentially stir a passion for the pursuit of research careers.
As for the lack of industrial presence in Biotechnology, it requires a more detailed post, but suffice to say that bio/nano-technology is the future. As a country, India cannot afford not to be a front runner in that race.
There are however two roadblocks (that I perceive) towards implementation of this type of policy – monetary and human inertia. Monetarily, it does not take huge amounts of financing to run a small research laboratory. It is not expected that such undergraduate research centers will produce papers for top journals like Science or Nature. There are nontrivial number of scientific problems out there that require man-hours. Due to the small scope and lower impact of many scientific problems, they are not handled by the bigger, more reputed laboratories and hence are ideal for the small setting (such research would also provide incremental benefits to the scientific progress of the country as a whole). Eventually, once an university gains reputation, there is also the possibility of industrial collaboration.
More important than money is perhaps the attitude of the professors, lecturers and administrators at non -IIT, non-IISc universities. Majority of the staff at these universities are happy to maintain status quo; comfortable in their cushy pensioned-government job and many content with the money coming in from conducting private tuitions on the side. Even if some professor is interested in pursuing research, there are any number of bureaucratic hassles. I personally know of someone who has attempted to start a small chemistry laboratory at one of the Kolkata University-affliated colleges. He even applied for and was awarded a UGC grant for the purpose. The college administration however balked at the idea and came up with flippant excuses to deny him the opportunity. This attitude needs a quick change.
Finally, it has to be stressed that this is not the single ’silver bullet’ policy for improving scientific research output in India. Great deal of revamping is necessary at the research institute themselves, including among others, greater monetary incentives for an academic career, improved infrastructure, less-politicking and more merit-based assignments and promotions etc. But those are topics for another post.
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16 Responses to “Undergraduate research training in India”
Jogging the path February 23rd, 2007 at 4:03 am #
Retributions February 20th, 2007 at 8:47 am #
DesiPundit » Archives » Undergraduate Research Training in India February 20th, 2007 at 12:15 am #
[...] At the policywise blog, Bong’o’pondit discusses the means to improve undergraduate research training. [...]
Corporate Serf February 20th, 2007 at 8:46 am #
Undergraduate research does not exist in a vacuum. One does not go out to create a department of undergraduate research. Rather, professors need bodies (minds) to go at a problem for which the professor has a grant (or some other source of support) and undergraduate students provide cheap hands. In the process they learn how research is done in actuality.
The reason we have such poor training in undergradaute research is because our universities are crappy places to do research. The few saints that do it nevertheless do not change this essential picture.
Perhaps the poor monetary rewards of research are a reflection of the value society places on research (Researchers in the US get paid less than MBA types, but the disparity seems to be far less). Or it could be a result of poor government planning and execution of an essential service. Wouldn’t be the first time, nor the first field. I notice that the author, himself a chemistry prof, does not propose opening up higher (and other) education to the private sector.
BongoP'o'ndit February 20th, 2007 at 9:42 am #
@Corporate Serf:
Perhaps it is not clear from the post, but my suggestion was to have research facilities within each department. Of course, you are right about our universities (including IITs) being a crappy place to perform research and poor governmental planning is responsible.
The higher education, at least in terms of engineering and medical colleges have been open to private sector for some time. I am not aware of how much research comes from them. This is one sector where I feel that the government needs to provide a catalyst.
Corporate Serf February 20th, 2007 at 11:23 am #
Bongo,
No, no, you were quite clear on the point. All I was trying to say was that the primary driver of undergraduate research education is the presence of professors with a size-able research programs. The real way to provide undergraduates with a feel for real research is to have real research projects within the department, and so that the need for manpower is greater than the supply of PhD students. Real research is always far moer exciting than anything a purported “educational research” program can come up with. In the setting of engineering research, a kalman filter feels much more exciting in the context of a concrete tracking problem, when it is obvious that elementary linear algebra leads to tangible results. We have a paucity of projects of this nature.
If anything, all IIT bashing / hand wringing aside, the IIT’s do have the best projects of this sort available within India, most of these arising from concrete problems in the industry. It as another matter that India still offers better opportunities as a management consultant than as an aeronautical engineer. My own alma mater, IIT kgp, has chip design projects driven by industry interest that leverages past work in the area by the CSE dept. Those old projects emplyed dozens of PhD and Masters students and provided at least 2 / 3 BTech final year projects for well over a decade.
The thing is, this is the kind of project pipeline that needs to be present in even second tier universities and that will automatically deliver all the “research training at the undergraduate level” that you can throw a stone at.
What I do not know is: do we need a tougher set of patent laws, so that the industry is forced to invest more in R&D? I am really divided on this. On the one hand I think tougher patents impeded progress in CS research. On the other hand, in fields where R&D investments mean more than couple of salary lines computers networks, tough patent laws probably do foster research.
What do others think?
gaddeswarup February 20th, 2007 at 3:17 pm #
Saw this blog for the first time and am not really familiar with the background. Just one point that I have been wondering about. How come very few are talking about universities making some money via knowledge, research, small scale munufacturing etc to raise at least part of their resources? Or teaching easy down to earth courses (like linear algebra, graph theory in mathes, rather than glamorous ones)where it is easy to get in to useful problems and get some research experience and it is possible to go on to more sophisticated topics. Or how about using the research of people like Madhav Gadgil (ecologist from IISc)for consultancies? Lot of people seem to be talking about govt. funding or FDI but very few about developing self sustaining universities.
confused February 20th, 2007 at 5:19 pm #
Gaddeswarup,
Welcome to policy wise.
We are definitely not against developing self-sustaining universities, how ever the real focus should be on departments, there should be annual audits for individual departments and see if they are financially viable. However, as far as research is concerned the only problem with financial model is there are easier ways to be financially independent than research . We would need and extremely committed and research-oriented faculty. This would require changes in how faculty is appointed and introduction of tenure tracks.
Right now, general universities are simply not ‘expected’ to conduct research. How many students look at research output before choosing their university/college? I ma of course talking about general universities.
gaddeswarup February 20th, 2007 at 8:35 pm #
I will float an idea which I had for sometime and do not really know any examples to test its validity. I worked in some of the elite institutions in India from sixties to eighties and then moved to west. My impression was that trying to start elite depts from the top has limited life and outside atmosphere catches up sooner or later. They become more and more career oriented, often do not allow strong outsiders to come and generally there has been a deteriotation of standards in the institutes I observed ( in the topics with which I have some familiarity). I am sure that there are also lot of examples from the former Soviet Union.
It seems to me that one way to take in to account outside reality is to see the outside needs, become part of the community and struggle for survival. Already some universities in UK are in to small scale manufacturing and some in Soth Africa in to consulting without loosing their academic independence.
I was once in a UGC Panel and it was doubted whether we could even make Linear Algebra compulsory at Undergraduate level since there were not enough teachers who could teach and it was considered too difficult for them to learn ( The situation may have changed by now). Places like TIFR were supposed to supply better people to universities, but many were reluctant to leave. The effects were minimal. Some sort of financial incentives where the work is related to the profession and outside world may help. This seems to be increasingly becoming a reality outside rich universities with endowments. These are just vague ideas I am floating to see the reactions; I have not been really studying these problems for a while.
BongoP'o'ndit February 21st, 2007 at 8:53 am #
@Corporate Serf: I agree with your point about having ‘real research projects’ within the departments. However, it would require colleges to have PhD/post-doc programs. What I also had in mind was the type of research carried out in the US by the small liberal arts colleges. Their output is not earth shattering and the laboratories are meagerly supplied. Still, what they work on are real-world scientific problems and the results gets published in second-tier journals. This could be at least a start for some colleges.
Btw, not IIT-bashing by any means. I simply wish that they were more productive in their research. The type of research you talked about relates more to technology than basic sciences. To be fair though, IITs were perhaps never meant to be on the cutting edge of scientific research (like TIFR or IISc).
By and by, I am also ex-KGPite – when were you there (if you don’t mind sharing) ?
@Swarup: Thanks for sharing your inputs – they are interesting. We do propose to pursue discussions on financial incentives, privatization etc.
Corporate Serf February 21st, 2007 at 2:08 pm #
94 (pass out) cse rp hall. You?
I have been pretty delinquent in keeping in touch with my old kgp friends, though
Sunil February 21st, 2007 at 7:46 pm #
I encountered a number of little things as an undergrad that really bothered me. My own department did encourage research, but we had to take courses in other departments. One of my chemical engg profs took great pride in teaching a course that, in his own words, “was unchanged for 20 years”.
With attitudes like that (in one of the “top” undergrad institutes), I think it’ll take a long time and a lot of effort to go about really encouraging research as an undergrad. It’s interesting that you mention the JNCASR fellowship though. I really benifited from that…..and did some “real” research as an undergrad thanks to that.
Sunil February 21st, 2007 at 7:47 pm #
….err….that should read “benefited”….
BongoP'o'ndit February 22nd, 2007 at 8:19 am #
@Corporate Serf: I was there between ‘93-’96 (I left after the 3rd yr of my integrated MSc course). We overlapped the year when us freshies were interned in VS !
@Sunil: Thats why I said that a change is attitude is more important than anything else.
Perhaps a good beginning would be more summer-training opportunities through schemes like JNCASR. During my years, many students in science actually wanted to do summer training voluntarily (admittedly many had the selfish interest of getting a good reco for grad school admission in the US) – but unfortunately, few research labs/institutes had the mechanism for accommodating them.
Alex M Thomas February 23rd, 2007 at 1:57 am #
True. [Typo-Many]
What India lacks is Research. This is what contributes to technology and progress.
One issue i don’t see mentioned in all these discussions, is the need for research in the Social Sciences.
For a balanced growth and for increased efficiency from ‘research’ it is necessary to have a balanced approach among all sciences.
Neeti February 23rd, 2007 at 6:02 am #
I agree about the lack of awareness and funds with respect to research. This is not just in case of pure sciences, but also applied sciences. But there is hope, ICMR has a short term research studentship for UG med students and IISc offers KVPY fellowships and now even mentorships to UG students.
A few colleges in Mumbai even have honours programmes. What I’ve observed though is that students who wish to go abroad for further studies are the ones who often try and get some research credits and do a project during their UG years, not for the love of the subject or to explore research as a full time career…
It’ll take strong initiatives from the govt as well as the corporate world to promote R&D in our country.
Policy Wise » Lack Of Social Science Research In India September 9th, 2007 at 7:47 pm #
[...] you’re new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!While attention is frequently focussed on lack of research in basic sciences, the picture is even more abysmal in case of social sciences. [...]