I often ask, “What’s expected of a PhD?” The literature suggests there are both private and social returns to pursuing one. But we must tread carefully: prestige, for instance, shouldn’t be conflated with a social return—it’s as private as the higher earnings a PhD might bring. Digging deeper, it’s clear that PhDs are inherently self-paced and heterogeneous. This is one level of education where each observation (in an imaginary dataset) is so unique that it could almost justify individual dummy variables in a regression, though that’s plainly impractical. Still, if we try to model the PhD journey, we might focus on two broad dimensions: the rhetorical returns (e.g., skills, signaling) and the costs (time, opportunity costs, mental toll). But here’s the catch: superimposing assumptions from lower levels of education often distorts findings, especially when analysing student costs. In this blog, I’ll offer an informal take on the Economics of a PhD, with a focus on India’s unique academi...
Increasingly, the notion that seems to backfire is “publish or perish.” Publishing research papers in all areas of generations of knowledge (i.e., disciplines) seems to have updated its course. Lately, however, what seems to dominate the business of the generation of knowledge is the attribute of expansion. Expansion in volume and numbers; still doubtful of the quality, though. What seems to change its course is yet an obvious question that research organizations, universities, and other educational institutions increasingly face is the question of “Why fund research?”. Increasingly, private players' intervention seems to impact the existing research landscape worldwide. Looking at just the discipline of economics, the below graph from Aigner, Greenspon, & Rodrik (2021) demonstrates the irrational yet exponential growth in several journals and published research papers over the last four decades. While growth in numbers is evident, a question of perspective remains. As follows...