Oct
Losing the ‘Education’ edge
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As some of my batch mates went from IITs to MITs and other US Universities around the world, the number of publications in their resumes started to increase at an exponential speed. To me this phenomenon really did not make a lot of sense as how can a student or his research change within a couple of months to take their number of publications from non-existent (in IIT years) to innumerable (in US Universities). The simple answer I got from my friends was funding and resources available. Ofcourse IITs being one of the best institutes in the world in terms of students still lack the resources for producing world class research.
I have always considered US Universities as one of the biggest assets of US Economy. The funding and prestige of these universities brings most of the world’s students pursuing PhDs into states and once they are in US they never leave. In turn these students do research which helps US and also start companies which get US billions in taxes. An example is when a macbook is made in China and sold anywhere in the world, the major portion of the cost is divided by US and China (China for manufacturing and US for designing) and in turn China’s contribution can move to any other country where a factory exists but US contribution is permanent simply because Apple designed this in US and is based out of California.
The research and intellectual properties created by US University graduates can probably be considered the single most important reason for making US the superpower it is today. So when I read this article in NYTimes regarding how the US is cutting funding to University of California at Berkeley, I was kinda astonished. Afterall no one should step on their competitive edge and most of all US should not do this. I guess for countries like India and China it might be a little positive as the much hyped brain drain might get a sudden stop from this. Ofcourse the world, innumerable students and research will face a bad consequence. I hope the problem gets solved but well lets see!
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3 Responses to “Losing the ‘Education’ edge”
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Shubham, I have a different view . Maybe, private funding should reach these universities now. We have all heard of startup incubators. Perhaps, there should now be PHD incubators – with private firms fully/partly sponsoring PHD students for working on their assignments while completing PHDs, or even sponsoring the thesis work of these PHD students, with some equity over the outcome of the thesis- which maybe cashed in if the thesis leads to something pathbreaking.
Probably something like that, if implemented in India, would lead to even more interesting results. It may lead to stopping the brain drain as a first.
@shubham well i truely agree with u but i think in order to produce high class research material from colg’s like IIT students enthu is missing and that is supported by prof’s which is lacking badly here in india
Brilliant article! Very well presented, but I believe every research paper is not meant to be path breaking or something different from status quo. It is also about incremental research.
A good quality research paper which can be used as a foundation by future researchers is not that frequent. Some researchers publish around 15 papers in the same field over a span of 2-3 years which seems senseless to me. I believe it is pretty much the norm now. What is really brilliant is that US funds research & welcomes smart people from all over the world and they make sure that they reap benifits from the investment in research.