78 per cent of the supervisors felt hardly any thesis made any intellectual contribution
60 per cent thought that most of them were repetitive studies of phenomena by known methods
30 per cent of theses were considered good
40 per cent of scholars report favouritism on the basis of domicile, caste or religion
Almost 35 per cent of the scholars do not spend the full working hours of a day on research. 30 to 40 per cent of supervisors didn't give adequate time to the scholars
Nearly 70 per cent of supervisors work in isolation, not interacting with researchers doing similar work in other institutions
Of the 3,000 theses approved every year, about 700 are of fairly good quality which could be of interest to user agencies
Applied research, which accounts for 80 per cent of theses, is often trivial, mediocre and without any intellectual input
30 per cent of PhD scholars drop out. This results in the loss of almost one-third of the total scientific research spent by an institution.
More than 20 per cent of the scholars take a long time to complete the research, thus further eating into the research budget
Almost 99 per cent of the scientists were found to be politically very naive, even reluctant to see the connection between politics, economics and science
(Source: CSIR-sponsored sample study of 9,000 PhD theses by Rais Ahmed, a former director & Madhulika Rakesh, researcher)