On strong PhD programmes

A few days ago, in response to this post, a commenter wondered if Indian institutes, including the new ones, are turning into factories to train students to go abroad.  I don't have the general statistics about students staying back in India vis-a-vis students going abroad.  But, from what I observe at N1, a good chunk of our faculty members have studied at institutes like IISc or other older institutes.  So, these institutes have not just trained people who leave the country, but have also trained a sufficient number of people who are doing excellent work at new institutes and are building them up.

But, to come back to the commenter's specific concern, can the new institutes do more to create a research environment that can motivate more students to stay back?  Well, for starters, we can have well designed and competitive PhD programmes which will inspire, attract and motivate interested students.

Scientists and educators  with more experience and accomplishments can of course offer much more carefully thought out views about this matter.  But, two recent incidents have motivated me to write and share some thoughts about it (for whatever they are worth).  I apologize in advance for my scattered thoughts and some "wild speculation" that follows.

Firstly, I have been spending a lot of time with a student in our Post BSc Integrated PhD (PBIP) programme.  In this programme, students finish course work (equivalent to MSc) in the first two years.  In addition, in their second year, they choose an area of interest in which they do a year-long project.  At the end of the second year, they take a comprehensive exam, and if successful, start working towards their PhD in the third year.  The primary advantage of this format is that in the first two years, we can give a rigorous training to students as per the standards and requirements of our PhD programme.  This gives them a stronger foundation to start their PhD at the beginning of the third year with a supervisor.  But, at the end of the second year, students also have the option of leaving with an MSc.

This student is doing her Master's project with me.  As I am leaving next term, we are trying to finish most of her project work while I am still here and she has easier access to me.  This student is very eager, motivated and hard working.  She is, in essence, the first student of our PBIP programme [1].  Her performance, so far, has been brilliant.  So, members of my department have been mulling a lot about how our PBIP programme can be strengthened so that students like her can get the most out of it and retain their motivation.  Moreover, how can we ensure that students like her stay back with us for a PhD and not move at the end of the second year?

Rephrase: How can we attract talented students like her to stay back with us?  [2]

Secondly, there has been some discussion at N1 recently about the underlying objective of the institute.  While some members of our institute primarily think of it as an undergraduate teaching institution and wish to mould it accordingly (with a vision of faculty members doing research in addition to their primary undergraduate teaching responsibilities), some other members see our institute as a research institution, which, equally importantly, teaches and trains students at all levels (undergraduate as well as post graduate) to do science [3].

Members of the latter group feel that to accomplish this vision, our PBIP programme, as well as our PhD programme, should be given  as much importance as the Integrated BS-MS programme.  In fact, it is felt that the PBIP programme should be considered as much a flagship programme of the N-type institutes as the BS-MS programme.

The programme, as it currently stands, may come across as a mere sidekick to the nationally recognized BS-MS programme.  For example, I am not sure about other N institutes, but at N1, we do not have separate courses for the PBIP programme.
Instead, we ask PBIP students to take courses in the higher levels of the BS-MS programme.  This is mainly because of (hopefully short-term) logistical issues, like non-availability of enough faculty to teach so many courses.  Thus, instead of designing courses specifically for the requirements of these students, we only adjust them into our existing courses, which were designed for a different programme.  This may not necessarily inspire the confidence of the students who pursue PBIP or train them in the best possible way [4].

Recognizing PBIP as a flagship programme will lead to proper planning of the course structure in keeping with its aims and very importantly, hiring of enough faculty  to keep the programme running independently.

Another very interesting idea that is being discussed among some faculty members is the possibility of a common national-level entrance procedure into PBIP for all the N-institutes akin to that of the BS-MS programme.  This might enable these institutes to publicize this programme more widely and tap into a bigger pool of talented and interested students.

Given the energy levels and the flowering research programmes of many faculty members at the N institutes, the PBIP programmes at these institutes certainly have a very bright future.

I hope to blog more about this issue as I understand it better.  Inputs/comments from readers will be highly appreciated.

I know that some of the readers of this blog are PBIP students at N-type institutes.
It would be great to hear back from them about their experience with this programme.



[1] Another student had been chosen in the batch before her.  But, he left the programme because he found the course work daunting.
[2] Somehow, "ensure" seems to have a very sinister and coercive implication.  A couple of years ago, a proposal was floated that we levy some kind of fee on students who want to leave with an MSc, but this was immediately shot down by the academic committees overlooking this issue.
[3] Whether these ways of thinking are fundamentally different or fundamentally the same could possibly form the subject of a future blog post!
[4] In my STEM field, this leads to some additional complications.  While, technically speaking, first year PBIP students are equivalent to fourth year MS students, most undergrad programmes in India do not cover the material that we cover in the third year of our BS-MS programme.

Two in one

As I have mentioned before, compared to other departments at N1, my department is really short of faculty members.   In the last one year, we somehow managed a mostly one-to-one mapping between our courses and instructors per semester, with some of us teaching two courses [one course typically being a higher level course taught to students in upper years ].   However, in the new course structure, we will be teaching two extra courses per semester from next year.  We further wish to strengthen our Integrated Master's and PhD programme and add some more courses to it instead if asking these students to take courses with upper year undergraduates.

Combine this with the dwindling number of faculty members in our department and you have a situation in which we will all need to teach two courses per semester.
As I was describing this situation to a colleague from a very well-endowed department, he remarked, "two courses per semester? That's a fate I wouldn't wish for my enemies!"

I appreciate this colleague's concern for my department.  Most of my own departmental colleagues have also thought about it.  Given that most of us are very young and building up our research programmes, we would ideally like a teaching load of at most one course per semester, just like our friends in the other departments.  Nonetheless, we are mentally prepared for this scenario [0].

A colleague, who has been instrumental in designing our courses and has taught multiple courses per semester before, feels that it will not be as difficult as we have ourselves designed our course structure and content.  Contributing to a scheme which we feel strongly about will be challenging and will not feel like a burden.  I share my colleague's optimism, but am also aware of the challenges of multi-teaching.

In the previous semester, I taught two courses for the first time.   Both were taught to moderately sized groups.  I had very ambitious plans for both these courses.  I wanted to upload typed course notes for both of them because typing things out makes the structure and material very clear in my mind.  The plan was to prepare all lectures for course 1 in the coming week on Saturday, lectures for course 2 on Sunday and spend about one and a half hours each daily typing up the notes during the weekdays.  This, as I foresaw, would also give me ample time for research.

As it turned out, however, I found preparing the lectures much more challenging and time consuming than I had thought.  It would take me the entire weekend to prepare the lectures of one course (the course which I had thought would be easier to teach!)  I would prepare the lectures for course 2 during the weekdays and this also took a lot of time.  So, I toned down my ambitious plans and was able to put up typed notes only for one course till the middle of the semester.  After that, as the pace of the lectures increased, the time spent in preparing them increased even more and I had to give up typing notes for good.  I also found myself not able to give as much time to my PhD and Master's student as I would have liked.

Perhaps, teaching both these courses could have been less strenuous if I had taught at least one of them before.  With more experience, pursuing this kind of teaching load without impacting research work can also possibly become "second" nature.  But, as of now, it certainly is a challenge and entails very strict time management.

In the coming semester, I will be teaching two courses.  I have already taught one of them before and have the course notes ready [1].  So, this semester will be an opportunity to upgrade the material and the presentation [2].  The second course will be taken by a Master's student and Integrated PhD student doing projects with me and I have already planned for it according to their requirement.  As an additional advantage, this will add to the time I can devote to them.  If one has to teach two courses in one semester, this is the optimal course allotment one can hope for and we would want to ensure a similar arrangement for all department instructors as much as possible.

In my field, teaching two courses per semester is very common in similar Indian institutes as well as in North American universities.  Postdocs and PhD students might have it easier with just one course per semester, but permanent faculty, in a large number of research universities, have a 2:1 or 2:2 course load.  Faculty members at places with a 1:1 load consider themselves lucky to have a light load.

Here, however, almost all my colleagues have graduated from institutes where 1:0 load is more of a norm (if not 0:0!)  Most had not taught before joining N1.  So, a 2:2 or 2:1 load seems daunting because one is simply not habituated to it.

I look forward to hearing from readers about their current teaching loads, their thoughts about it and the load they would ideally like to have.


[0] I am writing this post under the assumption that there are two teaching semesters - autumn and spring.  The summer months are non-teaching months.  Some senior professors at the institute have floated the idea of offering "soft" courses in the summer semester, but at the moment, I don't want to go in there!


[1] I was supposed to teach a first year course before, but recent changes in the course structure and our departmental composition have necessitated  the outsourcing of this course to a colleague from another department.


[2] Teaching the same course over and over again can become boring and uninspiring.

Intelligent course designing

Recently, there has been much introspection at N1 about its undergraduate programme.  The first two batches of our undergraduate programme have done very well and most have got into prestigious PhD programmes all over the world.
While there is much appreciation of this fact, it is also felt that in the current course structure, the performance of students in the first two years has not been up to the mark.

Naturally, some are questioning whether our current process of admitting students, in the quest to fill up the number of seats specified by MHRD, is compromising on the quality of students.  This question assumes special importance in the current national debate concerning the IIT entrance exams.

The other question that people are asking is whether the current course structure of our undergraduate programme is the best structure to provide a strong foundation to our students in the sciences?  Is this system optimal from the point of view of the students? Has this system been fair to the students that we do get? Can we make our programme more accessible to our students without diluting our courses and without compromising on the objectives of our institute?

In the current system, students take a broad variety of courses in the sciences in the first two years  and choose a major subject in the third year (though they also continue to study interdisciplinary courses).  Thus, in the first two years, the students have to learn enough about different sciences to be able to develop a broad perspective in science and make an informed choice of their major.  The primary challenges in this system are

a) the jump from class twelfth to the first year of this programme.  Since each discipline is only represented by one course per semester for the first four semesters, a lot of material needs to be covered to prepare the students for the intensive courses that they take in the third year.  Many students are unable to handle the pressure at this early stage.  For example, students who opted for Biology in 11th and 12th now have a hard time keeping up with their peers in their first year Mathematics course (and vice versa).

b) Once a student decides to major in a subject A in the third year, she again has to make a big jump from what she studied in A in the first two years and the advanced material that she sees now in the third year.  Does one course of A each semester in the first four semesters adequately prepare the student to make an informed decision about choosing A as a major and then undertake five intensive courses of A each semester in the third year?  Keeping this in mind, when instructors try to ensure that students in the first two years have the necessary pre-requisites for year 3 by following a challenging course syllabus, many students experience burn-out.


There was some serious rethinking about these matters from the course-structure point of view rather than the quality-of-student point of view and various remedies were suggested.  Somewhere between the extreme of narrowing down a student to one subject in the first year itself and that of making all courses "gentle" was found the right balance.  Basically, the incline from one year to another has been made more gradual.

As per the new structure, which has now been approved by the senate,
a) Just as before, students will take one course per semester in each of the sciences in the first year.
b) In the second year, students will now choose three sciences of their interest and take three courses per semester in each of the chosen subjects.   These courses will be more rigorous than the first year courses.
c) In the third year, the student will choose a major from among the three subjects chosen in the second year.

The new structure has generated enthusiasm among many faculty members.  We feel that it gives us more space to introduce the most fundamental aspects of our fields in the first two years in a way that students have enough time to follow and digest what is being taught to them.  

Each department now has the fundamental task of redesigning the first year course and introducing appropriate new courses in the second year.  The next couple of weeks will be spent doing this as the new plan will be put into action in the coming semester.

I would like to hear from readers about the undergraduate course structures at their institutes in the initial years and their thoughts about it, either as a student or instructor (or both).

Course work: How much/little is too much/little

In the comments thread of the previous post, Hary raised an important point, namely coursework for PhD students.  Hary's perception is that PhD students at new institutes do not have enough course work before starting their research work, since faculty are too busy teaching the undergraduate courses.

Some people are of the opinion that new institutes should have started their PhD programmes after becoming well established and after their permanent campuses are fully ready and equipped.  There is much to be said for this viewpoint.
However, I feel that waiting so long before starting a doctoral program would have been detrimental to their primary objective of combining strong undergraduate teaching along with conducting research activities.  I am not sure how wise it is for any NIIX to restrict its research activities to undergraduate theses and summer research programs for the next 5 to 10 years.  NIIXs are also hiring people who are expected to do research and for many of these people, having students is essential for progress in their research programs.  So, having a well structured PhD program is one of the top priorities of these institutes.  The training of their first few students and what these students do with their PhDs will go a long way in determining the future of these institutes.

Course work, we all agree, is an important component of a PhD programme.
However, not all agree about how much course work a student needs before embarking on research.  For example, the course work that my departmental colleagues and I did as PhD students was more intensive than what PhD students in our department at N1 do. However, whenever my colleagues and I raise the issue of increasing the course requirements for our students, colleagues at other departments disagree with us because they feel that their students do not need as much course work.  So, at the moment, we have balanced all view points by asking students to do some minimal number of foundational courses, upon which all departments agree.  I don't think that determining the course requirements has anything to do with a shortage of faculty: the departments who insist most on less mandatory course work are in fact the departments which have a very high number of faculty members.

After this requirement is fulfilled, the student's advisor will direct the student to sit in for more courses which the advisor considers important for the student.  The student can also voluntarily attend classes that he or she is interested in.  For example, next semester, I will be teaching a course for final year undergrads at N1.
I have asked my PhD student to take this course because he cannot possibly start working on his thesis problem before taking this course.  He will take this course not just informally, but also do all the work required from those who credit this course, that is, do the assignments and write the exams.  Since he is a little senior to the other students in the course, the expectations from him will also be higher.
Likewise, he will be encouraged to take more courses in the future if they are relevant to his training.

For some part of this semester, he is visiting an older institute, which is running a special program in my area of research.  He will be attending some lectures given by an expert on a topic which is very important for his future project.  So, to answer Hary's question, like me, many supervisors encourage their students to spend time in Ox type institutes and do some course work, although there is no formal exchange programme.  Many of us are aware of the exposure that our students need and encourage students to make good use of opportunities available outside N1.  At the same time, however, we also don't want students to lose their focus on their research project by traveling too much, at least in the initial stages of their training.

Another resource which I hope we can utilize is our recent connection to the National Knowledge Network, which now gives us access to very high speed internet.  This month,  a senior professor in North America will be giving a series of lectures on a weekly basis which both my student and I will attend.  All that we need is to connect via gmail webchat and have the professor's webcam facing the board on which he will write (or the screen on which he will project his slides).  This way, if Mohammed cannot go to the mountain, the mountain can come to Mohammad.

With more technology, of course, one can have virtual classrooms on a larger scale in which we get instructors from all over India and the world.  This could be one more way of giving more exposure to students who would like to attend more seminars or lectures and interact with research groups in other institutes.

I would like to ask readers the following questions:

If you are a supervisor, how much course work would you like your student to do before s/he starts working on the thesis topic? Do you encourage your student to attend more courses in the later stages of his/her training or would you prefer that the student focus entirely on their research project?

If you are a student, how much importance do you give to course work as part of your PhD training?  Do you consider the course requirements at your institute or university as too much or too little or just right?