About 25 per cent of the PhDs in computer science graduating in the US are of Indian origin

Updated on: Monday, January 28, 2013

India is far behind countries like US when it comes to the number of PhDs in computer science engineering, though the country has seen an increase in their number of late, Microsoft officials said.

India, which was producing 35 doctorates a year in computer engineering in 2005, has increased the number to 100 to 125 at present as against the 1,800 to 2,000 PhDs in the USA and China Richard F Rashid, Senior Vice President, Microsoft Research, told reporters here.

About 25 per cent of the PhDs in computer science graduating in the US are of Indian origin, Richard said, adding, Microsoft alone employed about 850 PhDs across the world. This is just one per cent of its total workforce and two per cent of technical workforce.

The number of Phd graduates in computer science was very small compared to the number of students graduating with bachelors and masters degrees even as India was producing nearly 1.7 million engineering graduates in a year, P Anandan, Managing Director, Microsoft Research India, who was also present, said.

Microsoft has come up with a community research portal www.researchconnector.net to address this gap by providing access to faculty, resources and experience, the officials, here to participate at its Flagship research symposium, TechVista 2013, said.

Only about 20 institutions in the country including IITs offered proper research oriented programmes, Anandan said.

Stating that though enrolment (in PhD) were increasing and students looking mainly at jobs, he said this trend would reverse once the economy started becoming more developed.

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