Thursday, January 28, 2010

Ph.D's in USA

How many Indian PhDs from US universities stay back in the US? Well, according to this article, based on a report, it is 81%.


In 2007, foreign citizens accounted for 16,022 of the Ph.D.s awarded in science and engineering in the U.S., or 46% of the total, according to the Oak Ridge data. In contrast, the class of 1997 had 12,966 foreigners, or 30% of the total.

Graduates of Ph.D. programs in the physical sciences and computer science are more likely to remain in the U.S. than those in other fields, Mr. Finn said. Those programs are popular with Chinese and Indian students, who are more likely to remain in the U.S. after completing studies than those from Taiwan, South Korea and Western Europe. Among 2002 graduates, 92% of the Chinese and 81% of the Indians were in the U.S. after five years; in contrast, 41% of South Koreans and 52% of Germans were.

The figure shown in the above article seems to be referring to data of 2002 and shows that the number of Indians receiving science and engineering doctorates in 2002 was 615.The trend in the interactive graph indicates that 91% stayed back in 2003 while 81% stayed back in 2007, indicating a 10% drop in 4 years. Couple this with the fact that the number of Indians receiving doctorates have been increasing significantly in the last few years. The number of Indians receiving doctorates (in all branches put together) in 2002 was 838. The number of Indians receiving doctorates in USA for the year 2008 has now increased to 2316. Thus, the numbers returning back to India have increased significantly in the last few years. This is partly because the salaries in India for doctorates in certain organizations now are about $40,000, which is higher than that of US if one takes into account the cost of living and purchasing power.

30 comments:

Unknown said...

Sorry Sir for talking out of the subject here...
but its very important for me to know...
Sir This year M going to appear for Gate.. but sir could you please tell me "Is Doing ph.D is better than doing ME" from iisc .. or should i try for ME by taking a drop of this year and preparing for the same..???

Anonymous said...

Is this a joke? Doing Ph.D is better than doing M.E? Ph.D is a research degree while M.E is a course based master's program.

Unknown said...

but now we can directly get into ph.D without doing any master's programe..

Anonymous said...

Sir,

Can you elaborate what jobs in India pay as much as 40K USD for a recent Phd graduate?

Anonymous said...

>> Can you elaborate what jobs in India pay as much as 40K USD for a recent Phd graduate?

@1USD=45INR, 40k USD = 18 lacs

There are many engineering jobs in India that pay that kind of money to PhDs. I doubt if you can make that kind of money in science subjects though (unless it is Math and related to the financial industry).

Bharat

Anonymous said...

Anon # 2, Here are some starting salary data I vaguely remember for fresh PhD graduates from overseas (EU)

(1) data mining analyst position in B'lore (2004) ~15 lacs
(2) mechanical engineer at GE B'lore (2007) ~ 13 lacs
(3) organic chemist position at GE B'lore (2006) ~ 8 lacs

I am sure other readers can provide more recent data.

Anonymous said...

Jobs in GM, Shell and DuPont for engineering Ph.D's with 1-2 years experience pays around Rs. 18-20 lakhs per year.

Some IT jobs pay higher (around Rs. 25 lakhs) in google, yahoo etc

Anonymous said...

What about the guys who dont have a Phd in Computer science or EE and cannot work in google, yahoo etc? what about a chemical engg phd or a material science phd??

Anonymous said...

Jobs in GE, GM, Shell and DuPont are for engineering Ph.D's in chemical engineering or material science

Anonymous said...

Unfortunately, the dear anons never bother to read Professor's comment carefully. He says
"if one takes into account the cost of living and purchasing power"

All the calculations are waste if you do not take this into account. What he wants to say is one can be much more comfortable (even if the net salary is less) in India. 1,00,000 a month in Bangalore are surely lesser than 25,000 a month in a village. But my dear friends who do not know anything except for money and calculation perhaps can not understand the deeper philosophy of professor.

Anonymous said...

Anons - a bunch of you corrupted by decadent capitalist values appear to have hijacked this thread. You guys don't seem to care about deep philosophy and purchasing power parity. What you care about is cold hard cash and an idea of what you can make after a foreign doctoral degree. I think you are planning to holiday in the west, regularly indulge in scottish single malts and drive a maserati while working in India. Those are very naughty thoughts and totally unbecoming of students from such premier and prestigious institutions. Why can't all of you try to be more like Shreeman Brown Nak anon.

Giri@iisc said...

Didn't check my blog over the weekend but I think many others have given the statistics of current salaries in India. I feel if one earns $40 K in India, one can lead a very comfortable life. With these kind of salaries on the rise, I feel that more and more people will like to return to India, despite the infrastructure problems.

Anonymous said...

I am moving from USA to one of the IITs. Can anyone share the cheapest mode of transporting my belongings/baggage from US to India.

Anonymous said...

Anon 9:25 AM,

I have moved to US 5 years ago from another country (where I also lived 5 years) only with the maximum number of suitcases that we were allowed to carry with us. I will be going back to India in a few months and again we will carry only our suitcases with us.

We have a lot of stuff (children's things, books, etc), but the hassle and the cost of shipping it doesn't make shipping attractive to us. You may want to check what are British Air. rules for luggage; according with their website you can carry up to ten (?) pieces of luggage (at an additional cost).

K.
P.S.: Please, don't take what I wrote as a rule, but rather as my personal experience/preference.

Anonymous said...

To the last two anons:

You might find something about this in the discussions on this forum.

Anonymous said...

Sorry, this is the last anon again. Blogger ate my link in the last comment. My apologies to all.

There is a website about returning to India from abroad. If you give a google search with keyword "Return to India", it comes up at the top. There is a discussion thread talking about shipping issues.

Anonymous said...

Sir,

Can you also add a section to the new faculty website describing about the post doc opportunities at IISc an also about the features of such opportunities like the general pay, and wat other benefits do post docs qualify for?

Anonymous said...

Dear All,

How do the IIXs fare in terms of faculty housing. I know from Prof. Madras that IISc housing is not that grt. However how do the housing of IIT-D, IIT-B and IIT-K fare. Are they better than IISC.

Anonymous said...

Where have I said that the housing in IISc is poor? I said the housing provided by IISc for assistant professors needs improvement. Everything needs improvement.

The housing where associate and full professors is quite good, in my opinion. On campus housing housing has many benefits like free water, free maintainence, 24 hr water and electricity and excellent atmosphere in IISc.


Giridhar

Anonymous said...

I am an Asst. professor in USA who is returning to India and joining one of the IIT in June 2010.
I have a US Green card. Now the green card could be given up anytime but people suggest to me to retain it so that going to US on travel and even holding adjunct positions in Us universities is not a problem.
Anybody in the community can share his/her thoughts on this. How long can retain your green card without staying in US.

Anonymous said...

The general job market in the US is looking extremely bleak. Academia in itself is handicapped by hire freezes, budget cuts, elimination of programs etc. On the top of that the entire process of tenure in US university is extremely nerve wrecking particularly in this environment with limited funding and fierce competition.
I think personally the opportunities offered by IIXs with job security, reasonable funding and good working environment will prompt many people to return. Maybe Prof. Madras can highlight if the total number of applications in IIX have increased in the last year or so.
Also today in the blog [http://nanopolitan.blogspot.com/] I found that IITs as a whole rank within the top 15 in engineering in terms of total citations. Though this kind of ranking has its own blemishes, it is a significant achievement for the IITs.
It gives a lot of pleasure and stimulus to people like me who are returning to India after spending several years as faculty in the US Universities.

Dr. Saptarshi Basu

Anonymous said...

I am a fourth year accounting PhD student in a (about) 50 ranked US university. I dont agree with your job market assessments. My friends who graduated recently got jobs on 9 month teaching contracts for 140,000 dollars. plus summer support of about 10,000. where can you get that sort of job in India - forget teaching - even in industry?

Anonymous said...

Dear Anon,
I was not talking about Business School PhDs. Yes for them getting $140 K job is not uncommon. Also teaching fac. in USA especially in teaching only B-schools do not need to bring in money and support grad. students for tenure.
For funding 4 graduate students and 3 months of summer support and to do experimental research one needs to bring in atleast $ 500K per year. Add to that writing 3-4 papers per year, teaching 2-3 courses and other service requirements.
young faculties in Engg. in US in research intensive schools need about 800 K-1000 K as external research funding and publish 10-15 papers in 5 years to get tenure. In this market it is not easy.
Also job market for Engg. students is not shining either.

Saptarshi

Anonymous said...

Dear Anon February 12, 2010 8:31 AM, Saptarshi is absolutely right. I'm in a reputed private university in US (rankings vary so much...) and my professor (that is relatively well-known and has good funding) doesn't make much more than your friend is making.

Of course, in US the salaries even inside a department vary a lot. It depends how good you are at bringing money and what the university will do to keep you too.

Your friend is a very lucky/skilled guy or his field is very "hot". Good luck to you too if you are planning to stay in US. I have made my mind and will go for "greener pasture" by next year.

M.

Anonymous said...

Prof. Madras,

Is it allowed (legally) to accept an offer from one IIT and then decline it and join another IIT for personal/academic reasons. Has such things happened in IISC and also IITs that you know of.

Anonymous said...

Saptarshi - looking at your webpage, it appears that you have picked a good time window in your career to return back to India. In my experience, once you get sucked into the rat race to tenure, there is no looking back and it is too easy to lose track of your priorities in life. I finished my race nearly a decade ago but I am yet to stop running and reflect on whether it was all worth it in the end.

Good luck. In my opinion, academic careers in Indian Universities offer a better life-work balance. I didn't have the courage to make this decision when I had an offer from my alma mater IIX almost a life time ago. At that point, I thought it wasn't the right time to go back! Maybe, the next time window will be when my kids go off to University. Till then, I got to keep on running and learn to live with the choices I made...

Anonymous said...

In Canada, Universities are required by law to disclose the salaries of all individuals who earn more than 100,000 C$. Data for Universities in Ontario (2009) can be found here
www.fin.gov.on.ca/en/publications/salarydisclosure/2009/univer09.html
Some of the recent hires at Assistant/Associate Professor levels make more than full Professors already in post.

Anonymous said...

Salary disclosure links for Universities in Ontario, Canada

preview.tinyurl.com/yhsjd9e

http://tinyurl.com/yhsjd9e

Maddy said...

sir,
Im Be graduate, mech dept... Im very mush interested in research.. Can u please tell if there is any other exam other than GATE to do Msc at iisc..

Anonymous said...

thanks Prof. Anon. for your kind words.

Saptarshi