Re: PhD Thread As a PhD grad myself (recent one) I have to say that no matter where you are and what field you do the degree in, your initial salary won't justify spending 5 years at an university. You will be recruited into jobs that mostly require a master's degree.
However, I did an MBA earlier and I know that the amount of substance that a PhD grad can produce, and the resilience, emotional maturity they most often display, cannot be replaced easily. My MBA was a cakewalk in comparison, and the most important thing that we worried about was the choice of words to use to appear diplomatic while analyzing a business plan, or what format the slides should be in. This was in a top 3 college.
A PhD is a different game altogether. It teaches you how to learn how to create knowledge and how to leverage what exists today to create what would be the future. Almost all developments we take for granted today emerged in research labs at least a decade or two back. You don't have to be a PhD to be good at research, but it is definitely an exposure that's very valuable. Personally, I find it very sad that even PhD graduates from IITs in India work at salaries that are less than those of tier 3 college MBAs- it's shocking because these people would easily have earned thrice as much even in Malaysia or some other SE Asian country. India does not respect research or original thinking at all- that explains where most industries in India, except a very few, are with regards to innovation. Getting a few hundred people into Google or Facebook every year won't build the nation. PhDs and the research culture has to diffuse into the broader industry and HRs have to make an effort to understand what the Ph in the degree means, as a moderator rightly mentioned above.
My batchmates from China were all recruited by the state enterprises there before graduation. We all say China steals, but it also invests in the talent and gets folks who are technically capable into good positions early on.
My experience of job hunting in India in a booming engineering field globally was abysmal. Companies would rather see you just with a 1 year 50 lakh Rupee MBA (which I have) than a PhD, even if the position was a tech one. Research makes the HR folks angry, and most of them have never worked abroad or got acquainted with innovations in their field in the last 10 years. The funniest part was when I saw that the HR head of a top consulting firm in India, which recruits PhDs internationally on a large scale, was from an university that was declared illegal earlier in the last decade.
If you do a PhD, go abroad. Indian companies except those allied to Govt. funded scientific establishments have no interest in R&D. The govt. institutes are great, but the pay is low and you have to deal with the bureaucracy after a while. Great place to spend the beginning of your career though. The tragedy is that instead of scientists or engineers, most Govt. research wings end up being headed by IAS officers of questionable expertise. Nowhere in the world will you see a decorated engineering professor answering to a bureaucrat who never studied science even in high school. But in India, sadly, IAS is more respected than an ISRO scientist.
Good luck to all folks planning for a PhD. |