The recent announcement that China awarded its first “practical PhDs”, doctoral degrees conferred for tangible products rather than traditional research papers, is a timely catalyst for a long-overdue conversation on the relevance, design, and culture of PhD education in India. In China’s new model, doctoral candidates are evaluated on working prototypes and real-world applications instead of lengthy theses and publication counts.
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This shift recognises applied innovation on par with scholarly writing and challenges the deeply rooted academic paradigm in which a PhD is almost synonymous with a long thesis and a suite of published papers. Our universities should ask themselves whether we need to evaluate a thesis based on the number of papers a scholar has produced or if we need to focus on the societal relevance of the work.
Academic malaise
One major difficulty students interested in research in India face is the prolongation of the PhD. In many universities, there are students who have spent more than three years; in some cases, students spend eight. Even though there are many issues with delays in PhD work, most instances are due to delays in publishing. In several departments, progress is judged less by the depth of original insight and more by the number of papers indexed in certain databases and the reputational clout of journals in which they appear. This culture undervalues the quality and relevance of research.
While publication is undeniably a pillar of academic excellence, the current fixation on having multiple indexed papers for a degree to be considered completed can encourage superficial research that may not push disciplinary boundaries or address pressing real-world problems.
It also intensifies the pressure on students to chase journals — any journals — that will accept their work, inadvertently fuelling unethical practices like engaging with predatory journals.
Scholars’ plight
In most labs, PhD scholars are treated as labour that supervisors can take for granted. Supervisors exploit the scholars in the name of publication, by prolonging their stay in the lab, so that supervisors don’t lose a good student trained in the domain. To maintain their labs, many supervisors also exploit their scholars by offering them the dream of publishing well, which, in reality, is mainly needed for the supervisors’ appraisals.
This culture is further aggravated by paid publications and dubious journals that promise quick indexing and impact metrics for a fee. Such outlets capitalise on the intense pressure on students to publish, thus creating a shortcut that erodes academic integrity. Though many Indian institutions now require papers to be published in indexed journals, the quality and relevance of these outlets vary widely, and the indexing status itself is frequently commodified by publishers. Ultimately, most doctoral research focuses solely on the university’s administrative needs, lacking scientific rigour or societal significance.
Hurdles with theses
In many universities, PhD theses are measured by the number of pages, often running beyond 200. There is a misconception that the quality of work is directly proportional to this number. History shows that even Nobel Prize-winning can span only a few pages. When one can concisely explain their research work, expanding it to occupy many pages just because that’s the norm is absurd.
The compulsion to write lengthy theses has led scholars to waste time and energy on introductions and inflated literature reviews. Many leading universities across the globe are moving towards compact dissertations that prioritise contributions over volume.
A major structural impediment in India’s PhD environment is the conventional thesis-defence model and long-lasting bureaucratic procedures. When they complete their studies, students have to deal with extended timelines to submit their theses, have them evaluated, and finally complete their oral defence. Administrative delays can further extend the final phases of a PhD by months, and in rare instances, even years, irrespective of the candidate’s productivity or the study’s significance.
For exceptional researchers who have produced significant ideas, potentially creating technologies or therapies with societal relevance, being constrained by prolonged review cycles diminishes the fundamental objective of doctoral studies.
Relevance of doctoral work
An important criticism of India’s existing PhD system is that a lot of doctoral research isn’t very useful to society. Many theses are still preserved in academic archives and don’t often help with public policy, new ideas in business or the health of communities. In many universities, copies of PhD theses are just dumped in a room or a backyard.
A PhD shouldn’t be a solitary intellectual pursuit but rather a conduit between profound investigation and significant influence. China’s practical PhD model seeks to bridge this gap by matching doctoral outputs with real-world applications and industrial scalability, including welding technology for firefighting systems, and is assessed by panels comprising both academics and industry professionals.
India faces many real-world problems that could benefit from high-quality PhD research. These issues span public health, agriculture, sustainability, digital inclusion, and education. The question is whether our current systems support and encourage studies grounded in what the people need.
Indian universities should brainstorm ways to reform the structure of PhD education to better suit the current world. The age-old practice of spending long years for a PhD doesn’t hold any merit in a digital world. Similarly, the structure and evaluation of the thesis should focus on the innovation it describes and its relevance rather than on the number of papers it produced. Just a mushrooming number of PhD holders does no good for the nation; India also needs good quality work that can support nation-building and humankind.
Biju Dharmapalan is the dean, Academic Affairs, at Garden City University, Bengaluru, and an adjunct faculty member at the National Institute of Advanced Studies, Bengaluru.
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