Why India needs to radically think its doctoral education programmes Premium

India must revamp its PhD programs to prioritize practical innovation and societal relevance over traditional publication metrics.

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.

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.