PhD stipends in India and online rants
This post was triggered by tweets such as the one quoted here: https://x.com/mnwsth/status/1800190073973137829. The complaint can be summarized as: ~Rs 35k for a PhD stipend is low. It is a full-time job, so why not pay PhD students similar salaries as the industry? PhD students bring patents and publications and help with improving institutional ranks. US PhD stipends allow us to support a family, own a car, and have a great time. As someone who did a PhD in a small-ish university town in the US and lived in the US for 12 years, I'd like to debunk a few of these claims. First and foremost: a PhD is really an apprenticeship. The first 2-3 years are spent on exploring topics, learning new skills, with a huge time investment from the mentor (ideally, whether or not this happens everywhere is a matter for another debate). People online have been responding to this by saying that "Oh, even at Google you have to spend some time picking up new skills". Yes, sure. However,...