A student journalism body of IIT Kanpur, Vox Populi, recently released findings of a two-part survey focusing on challenges faced by the students pursuing PhD. The detailed investigative analysis primarily examines personal and financial problems faced by students and also their struggles with mental health and stigma as well.
The part-1 of the survey that was released on January 26 was about the academic challenges, institutional policies and lab dynamics affecting over 2,000 surveyed PhD scholars. The survey revealed that 44 out of 63 individual equivocators have faced favoritism from their PhD trainers in the lab, while eight of the examinees reported facing casual sexism.
Mental health matters
More than 80% of the respondents said that they had been facing various mental health issues such as anxiety, depression and various other illnesses. Moreover, 34% of the students have been fighting and dealing with such issues for a long time.
Around 62% of the students who have dealt with mental health issues battled it out with the help of their friends and family. However, 11% bravely chose the Counseling Service (CS). 10.5% took the help of people outside to fight with their problems and sadly, 16% haven’t taken any assistance till now.
Onto the participation in the extracurricular activities, a total number of 181 individuals haven responded and 70% of them could not participate. The time limitations were one of the main reasons why the students couldn’t participate. The report also showed that 21% of the students were unable to participate owing to lack of opportunity.
Financial limitations
Highlighting the financial limitations, a total number of 195 individuals responded to the survey. The statistics show that 3.7% of the students receive an amount of Rs 40,000 – 60,000 rupees, which makes it the lowest percentage. Comparatively, 68% of students receive Rs 30,000 – 40,000. Meanwhile, 7.2% of students receive the highest amount that falls in between Rs 60,000 – 80,000.
Furthermore, the survey also found that as many as 84% of the students are the helping hand to their families.
Focusing on the subject of Lab Funds, a total of 192 responses were recorded. As many as 34% of the students proposed that the lab funds are either for the research work or gets distributed among the students. However, 50% of the students were unsure of the funds allotment.
Although conferences are the crucial and important part of the PhD research, 50% of the students out of 198 respondents claimed that only partial support was provided by the institutions to attend the conferences and on the other hand, 2.5% of the students are yet to receive the funds.
The survey concluded by drawing the attention to the importance of current lags, frauds in the system and to also look forward to incorporating changes actively.
