Students Lack Appetite For Research In India: Govt Survey

The All India Survey of Higher Education for 2018-19 has thrown up several interesting facts and figures as far as research in universities is concerned.

Key Takeaways:

1. Just around 2.5 per cent colleges in the country run PhD programmes and the maximum students opt for PhD in science stream.

2. As of now, only 1,69,170 students are enrolled in PhD programmes, which is less than 0.5 per cent of the total student enrollment.

3. The share of PhD students is highest in state public universities (34.3 pc) followed by institutes of national importance (21.6 pc), deemed university-private (21.6 pc) and state private universities (13.4 pc).

4. The maximum number of students out-turn is in the science stream, followed by engineering and technology. On the other hand, at the postgraduate level, the maximum number of student out-turn is observed in social science, followed by management stream.

5. In all, 40,813 students were awarded PhD degrees in 2018 with 23,765 males and 17,048 females.

6. Regarding gender distribution, agriculture, engineering, law and physical education sectors have the lowest female participation as far as research is concerned.

7.The report, which was released on Saturday, said that 3,694 students are enrolled as PhD scholars in foreign languages.