Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay

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This is a collection of articles archived for the excellence of their content.

Doctoral research/ PhDs

It takes 2 to 14 years to complete PhD

The Times of India, Nov 10 2015

Yogita Rao

Institute's media body compiles data since 1990

Researchers take an average of six years to complete a PhD at IIT-Bombay , according to data compiled from 1990 onwards by students of the institute. The maximum time, taken by two candidates, has been around 14 years while the quickest has been two years.All four were from the chemical engineering department.Computer science engineers, on an average, take the longest time (6.7 years) to complete their PhDs, while civil engineers take the least (5.1 years).

The students' media body on campus, Insight, has compiled the data available with the institute and analysed the time taken by researchers to complete their PhDs.

While the general perception on campus is that researchers take about five years, a majority of them, around 32%, have taken six years on an average. More than 40 candidates have even taken 10 or more years. The two candidates from the chemical engineering department who have taken about 14 years to finish their PhDs are deemed to be rare cases.

Among the departments, PhD candidates from computer science and engineering, humanities, mathematics, bio-sciences and bioengineering, metallurgical engineering have taken over six years to complete their research.Civil engineering and earth sciences departments have taken lesser time compared to the others.

Devang Khakhar, director of the institute, said that different departments have a different range of time taken to complete PhDs. It also depends on the subject of research, he said.

“The part-time PhD candidates, who make up for a significant number, take longer than the others as the candidates are also doing jobs. The institute does not have a segregated list, but we will soon work on it and have a better analysis,“ said Khakhar.

Though the students have taken data available with the institute from 1990, not al PhDs before 1999 have upload ed their theses online. So the data before 1999 is incom plete. The analysis is based on the data available online, said a student of the institute.

“There's a lot of data in the institute from various sourc es, and we thought it would be interesting if we present i in a visually intuitive way There's tremendous scope for such analysis, and it'll throw interesting insights into vari ous things,“ said Mihir Kul karni, one of the chief editors of Insight.