The Quality of Students in Ph D Programmes

Recent reports in the popular press have expressed concern about the quality of Ph D students in India (http://www.thehindu.com/features/education/parliamentary-panel-raises-questions-about-quality-of-phd-holdersin-india/article7166920.ece). In addition to concerns raised by parliamentary standing committees, I have heard my colleagues around the country complain about graduate students in their programmes. The specific complaint is that the quality of students has dropped over the years; it used to be much better ‘in the (not so) dim and distant past’. I must confess that I am a little bemused when I hear these comments as I have not encountered this ‘drop’ in quality. While every student is different and each one of my students has/had problems that I have/had to address, I do not see an overall drop in quality. However, given that this view has been expressed by a number of people whose opinions I respect, I wanted to take a look at both sides of the argument and see if I could provide possible causes and (hopefully) solutions to address this conundrum. This is important for faculty who work in Indian institutions and universities as our major work force consists of graduate students and it is their effort that drives the research in our laboratories. I will confess that my experience is limited to graduate programmes in the biological sciences, but hope that this exercise will be useful for other programmes as well.