Today earning a doctorate may not be as difficult as it was years ago. Before a researcher used to work for years and study day and night to obtain the prestigious prefix 'Dr.' but now a days students are outsourcing research to obtain PhD degree. There are a number of companies that performs all the work related to PhD at a fair price and the students are attracted towards them to complete the work without any detailed knowledge of the subject and hard work.
Don't you think that this not only poses challenges in terms of evaluating the research scenario in the country, but also calls for urgent measures to curtail the trend.
Please provide your valuable suggestions.
Dear Aravind,
I am not a research scholar or into a research but having expertise on some scientific experiments and skills of doing some experiments in a very reasonable and reliable ways.
As you said outsourcing a work always seems that one is not in a position or able to perform that work or by having ability but seeking a simplest ways to skip some hurdles.
I strongly support your view, this particular Ph.D outsourcing trend leads to frame our country's quality of education at higher level in a very bad way and everything will be money dependent and fake.
Finally that makes the prefix Dr. a worthless. This thing must be resolved as a priority to save from loosing our country's reputation.
Thank you for raising this question,
regards.
I am quite sure it is illegal to do such a thing. Collaborations are welcomed since the main goal is to offer the community innovative results, but I do not think PhD students may outsource their research and afterwards assume it entirely.
The practice seems to me to be not much different from purchasing a degree certificate from the numerous offers that one gets by E-mail., where no work is done at all.
Good question. But, not only companies, some PIs/ researchers promote it too. For example, I have seen 'indigenous PhD degree awarded in transgenic/ nude mice in cancer biology research" with all the "fancy experiments, results being carrier out in a Elite institution of the PI in USA". Bad precedence, but that's the way things move these days.
Logical for someone not to have some instrumentation, limitation in funding/ resources, platforms, software for not being able to conduct major and very relevant experiments, but "outsourcing the major part of the thesis of a "pet-Graduate students' whole work to a famous collaborator" is just not done.
Pitty on the graduate student, too, who would not learn much, and face immense challenges in Postdoc again !
Well, its not that all "Doctors" are same: some are MDs, some are Surgeons, some are Orthopedic, some are Dental and so on. Likewise, the "PhD Dr.'s are weighed by capabilities and hence deferentially evaluated based on the subject(candidate!)".
There is no escape to shortcut for sure! Best wishes.
Very important issue raised by Dr. Goyal...it is a need of the hour. I think there must be some strict regulations framed to control the level a PhD student can outsource. If there is no infrastructure available in a department or institutions for the proposed work then either the proposed work should be modified or stop being awarded PhD. It raises a level of non uniformity between PhD students and also promoting risk of plagiarism in near future. People will go for all sweet fruits without tasting the ripening one.
The problem is that outsourcing has a main drawback on the scientific background of the student (researcher). By stopping solving the problems, you will not continue to read the literature and update yourself, and the development of the scientific research skills will be a problem.
Well, I think this is the main responsibility of the supervisor, he should teach the student how to work and how to solve the problems occurring during his research. In that way, he should climb the mountain by the wright way.
Of course, cooperation from different disciplines is welcomed, provided that the researcher will understand and benefit from the scientific cooperation. Not just seeking someone who is doing the work for you at a moderate or acceptable price.
Regards
Thank you all for your valuable comments.
I also feel that scientific collaborations are very important since it is not always possible to have all the necessary facility by a institution. Moreover by having collaborations we can explore in different horizon of research as it is also not possible for a single individual to be an expert in all the fields,but this doesn't mean that we should commercialize research.
you want to learn skills than you have to do yourself...outsourcing will award the Ph.d. but not skills and knowledge.
The PhD is supposed to be evidence that the candidate is a competent worker in a laboratory, learning and using the techniques described in his/her thesis as well as being able to design experiments and draw conclusions from the experimental data. This experience is of course no guarantee that he/she has hands-on expertise outside the work described, but suggests that he/she is competent in understanding scientific methods and carrying them out. To obtain such a label by cash payment is fraud and imposture. I once heard of a female PhD candidate asked by the Examiner about some technical details of the apparatus she had used replied "Oh I left all that stuff for the technicians."
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