How NOT to do admissions into the Ph.D. program

The past month has been a difficult one with Ph.D. interviews and the school lock-down.  8 FIRs were filed by girls from one lab against their supervisor.  The complaint was about sexual harassment. As the matter is now in the hands of the police (who true to form are not doing anything), I will not comment on the matter.  Suffice to say, the school lock down has been lifted, the complainants demanding new supervisor have been allotted one of their choice, and we are limping back to normal.  The administration did not budged an inch on any of the issues but the students and the faculty have to complete the course work, end-term exams, thesis submissions...so we are back to work.
What I am going to talk about is the admission to our Ph.D. program.
The UGC has made an entrance exam mandatory for entrance to Ph.D. program.  A student has to score 50% in the written exam to be eligible for interview.  During the interview, the research scholar has to present the research topic he/she wants to work on.  If selected, the research supervisor has to be assigned immediately.

There are many things wrong with this guideline and I will explain it with our experience this time.
1. We were not sure how the 50% cut-off would work if we introduced negative marking.  Given our past experience we were, in fact, sure that we would not get many students. In fact, the schools that had kept negative marking did end up seeing far less or none qualifying the entrance exam. So we removed negative marking.  The end result- 837 candidates qualified.
2. We are offering 40 seats. So we requested the administration to call 3-5 times the number of seats i.e anywhere between 120-200 candidates.  This is where we ran into the biggest block. We have to ensure the reservation policy is followed.  The administration found out that the UGC gazette notification does not spell out how to ensure the reservation policy (which of course was something that the faculty have been pointing out for past one but the administration in its "we-know-it-all" approach have never acknowledged our concerns).  So they told us that all 837 candidates will have to be interviewed.
3. They sent the interview call letter to all the 837 candidates. We then pointed out that if a candidate is called at 10 am in the morning and the interview happens late in the afternoon, the poor student would be sitting/waiting for the interview many times without eating because they are so stressed out.  It has always been the policy to divide the students into two groups.  One group would come in the morning and the other in the evening.  Further, as the interviews were happening in March, we have classes in the morning. We have to work things out.  The next thing we knew was that the students had been called from 2.00 pm onwards and we had to conduct the interviews in the afternoon!
4. The administration also told us that 56 candidates will appear everyday. They also told us that it would be spread over 15 days. So we met, discussed, and decided to have three interview panels. Each panel would interview 19 candidates. 
5. The administration also instructed us to interview each candidate in domain knowledge, analytical ability, and research proposal.  This makes sense if we have at least 30-40 minutes with each candidate.  When we have only 10-15 minutes, this makes no sense.  But we did.  We figure out a way.  Three faculty would ask the student on domain and analytical knowledge.  One would examine the research proposal the student had brought with them.
6. In social sciences, the students decide their research topic but in sciences, where extensive laboratory work is involved, the students are assigned their research topic.  Further, at least in Sciences, the students do not know who to formulate a research topic.  Our education is not geared towards it.  The research proposal that most students brought with them was usually an extension of the work they had done as part of their M.Sc project.  Further, since we do not encourage our B.Sc/M.Sc students to read research papers (when I do this as part of my course, I am always told by senior faculty that students cannot read research papers and that my approach is wrong), they do not have any idea of the research work or how to design experiments or what to propose.
7.The administration then insisted that the research supervisor has to be assigned immediately.  We protested. If we are interviewing 837 candidates over a period of 15 days, where the student has no idea what is research, how can we assign a faculty to a student?  I would not remember the student who came on the first day.  I would not know from a 15 minute interaction whether the student would be a good fit for my lab.  The student would have no idea whether I would be a good research supervisor for him/her. These things are always done after a discussion.  The administration refuses to see the logic.  According to them, we have to follow the UGC gazette notification.  This is an issue that we still have not resolved.
8. Finally, we also tried to tell them that since we held the interviews early but admission will be done only in July, we are not even sure who will join us.  IISc, IISERs, CCMB, TIFR, NCBS, and all the other institutes will be holding their interviews. Most of our selected candidates will go over to these institutes.  Many will go abroad.  We do not know how many selected candidates will eventually end up with us.  Of course, our conversations with the administration are always one-sided.  There is never a dialogue as they do not believe in it. 
At the end of 15 days, the entire process is a blur.  I have stopped caring. 

The KVPY interviews

For the past three days, I have been doing KVPY interviews. This is a flagship program of DST that is coordinated by IISc.  Students have to give an aptitude test and if they qualify, they are called in for interviews.  The selected candidates are provided scholarships for pursuing research. The program was mooted to encourage children to study basic science as opposed to engineering/medicine.  I do not know the statistics as to how many children do end up in research but we have had couple of KVPY scholars in our M.Sc program.  Brilliant girls who ended up doing Ph.D.
However, this post is not about how successful the KVPY program is. Rather I am going to talk about my observations over the past three days.  There were groups and each group interviewed approximately 90 students over the three days.

1. Most were boys.  Of 90 students, we had only 6 girls in my group.  Assuming that the exam is not gender biased, and given the fact that the number of girls in most schools is equal to the number of boys (I talking about co-ed schools) one wonders about the lack of girls in this program.  I have to add here that I have been doing these interviews off and on for many years and over the years I have observed that the number of girls attending the interviews remains less than 10%.  I do not know if IISc has done any statistics to find out if the number of applications itself is low or is it the girls do not qualify.  If it is the later, then we have to worry about the exam pattern because then it would mean that the exam is gender biased. If the number of application itself is low, then we do need to do something to encourage the girls to compete in these exams.
2. If the number of girls was less than 10%, then the religious minorities fared even worse. Again I do not know the reason but I found it worrisome.
3. Biology and math are mutually exclusive.  Which is a pity because math is needed in biology and we get students at Ph.D. level who struggle with simple math.
4. Physical education is a popular choice of subject. So students take Physics, Math, Chemistry, and Physical Education. English is of course compulsory.  I was curious about Physical education because none of the kids looked fit but couple of them assured them that they do play games.
5. Finally, there is a big divide between the big public schools and the rest.  Many of the kids were from these big public schools, confident, and fluent in English. Most of them are taking tuition for JEE. Government schools were woefully underrepresented. We got couple of kids from Kendriya Vidyalaya.  The children from other public schools providing English medium education were hesitant, lacked confidence and preferred Hindi as the medium of communication.  Except one girl who said that she would prefer to talk in English and not in Hindi even though it was a struggle for her.

Scones and such like things

I watch the Great British Bake-off regularly. The range of bakes that the participants are required to know is just amazing and as for their showstopper bakes- I know I can never get to that level.  I love to cook and bake but I do not have the patience to work on  decorating cakes for  hours together. 
The thing about watching this show is that I too itch to bake so for the past few months I have been baking cookies and brownies and learnt to bake scones.
Scones are my new favourite because they hardly have any sugar.  And I found a low-fat version that I made today.  Instead of using maida, I used a mix of Ragi flour, atta, oats, and maida in equal measure.  I added cranberries, orange peel, and chocolate pieces.  I had it with orange marmalade that I made yesterday. 

The chrysanthemums are the last of the season.  They were the only bright spot in the garden this year.  The rest of the winter stuff- vegetables and flowers- were pulverized and eaten up by various birds and animals. No amount of fence was proof against their determination. For the first time I purchased dahlia plants for the garden for after all a garden must have some colour before the summer drains them out totally.

The urge to do something

Site visits always teach me something new.  In the last post I mentioned how attendance will not improve performance of a student unless the student wants to learn.  Today's post is somewhat a continuation of the point.
I went to visit one of our projects in Noida.  This project is supported by a Swiss funding organization and a member of the organization was visiting.  I accompanied her to the project.  One of the innovative things that this project has done is to select about 20 children and support their education through school.  The great thing about this is that we can track the progress of the children.  Three of them are now in Class (grade) 11.  One of them has joined the Arts/humanities section, another has joined commerce, and the third has joined the science stream.  All of them want to go to college/university.  Needless to say they come from economically underprivileged section and in fact the student studying in the Arts/Humanities works with his father in the evening to augment the family income.  And it is this student who floored me.
The Swiss representative introduced herself and after a round of introduction and looking at their report cards, she asked them whether they have any question for her.  After a slight hesitation, this boy stood up and said in perfect English that he is interested in Graphic Arts/Design and he wants to a pursue a course in this area.  Ultimately he wants to go to abroad but he does not how to go about to fulfill his ambition.  Can she help him?
As we further talked with him, it turned out that he knows Corel Draw and Photoshop but of course, these are obsolete because the field prefers Illustrator, a software he does not have.  His NGO had taught him photoshop but he had forgotten it because he did not have a computer/PC.  Now he has PC and he has WiFi connection.  So he has found You Tube Tutorials for Photoshop and he is learning it through that.  The only problem is that he used to have Photoshop (it came with the computer) but it has got corrupted now.
The entire conversation took place in English, something that I did not expect.  But what amazed more was the fire he had in him to do something with his life.  He knew what he wanted, he had explored the options, and now he wants is some guidance so that he could achieve his dream.
I know IGNOU has graphic design course and I left that information with the coordinator. I do hope he gets what he wants.

On mandatory attendance

Yesterday onwards we implemented mandatory attendance even for Ph.D. students.  The logic provided is that mandatory attendance will improve student's performance. 

I do not understand how it will.  If a student does come to the class because attendance is mandatory, what guarantee is there, as my neigbour put it, that he/she will be receptive to the ideas discussed in the class? If the student is not interested, attending a class will not necessarily improve his/her performance in the exam.  And many of us would prefer not to have a disinterested student in the class because they distract us.  The performance of a student in a given course depends on many factors of which attendance is but one.  It depends whether the student is interested in the subject, what teaching methodology is being adopted, did the teacher make the subject interesting, did the teacher take classes regularly, was the course properly organized, course materials that are available....there are so many parameters.  So by focusing on only  one parameter, how does the administration hope to fix the problem of failing grades is beyond me.

The logic completely fails when it comes to Ph.D. students. What if a student is disinterested?  In India, over the years, I have seen many students enter Ph.D. course simply to avail the fellowship. Since there is no mechanism to throw them out, they remain in the system and often leave with the Ph.D degree. I do not know what they will do with it but the degree is awarded to them.  Mandatory attendance will ensure that the student signs in the attendance register in the morning but does not ensure that he/she will work on their Ph.D.  So what is it going to achieve? 

I decided to do a little research on this subject. Most of the research has focussed on undergraduate students and the view is split. There are many papers showing that the attendance does not improve the performance while there are few that says that it does.

In our case we do have to wait and see.

Reconceiving the gene- Frederic Lawrence Holmes

When I joined SLS, I was asked to teach genetics. My heart sank. I had never done genetics. Vaguely, I remembered some classes during M.Sc but it never made any sense- more on how little I learnt in M.Sc. later.  But the point was I did not know anything beyond Mendel's law- something I learnt in school.  The senior faculty who coordinated the course was also emphatic that I should teach Benzer's experiments.
I sat down in the summer break to learn genetics.   In an attempt to understand Benzer's experiments, I turned to the internet and thereby learnt about this book.  I purchased it couple of years back and finally read it.

Frederic  Lawrence Holmes was Professor and Chair for the Section of History of Medicine at Yale University. He draws on wealth of information to present an engaging picture of the emerging field of molecular biology.  At the turn of last century, the nature of the hereditary material was plaguing the biologists.  Thomas Morgan began using, what we call as classical genetic tools, to address this question using Drosophila.  It was in his lab that Alfred Sturtevant, an undergraduate student forgetting his homework, built the first chromosome map one night. (This is a story I always tell my students!).  Morgan himself was not comfortable about chromosomes as the unit of heredity- he preferred to use the term factors.

But was chromosomes composed of?  And what was being transmitted?

Holmes paints the picture of those days- Muller's experiments with radiation to understand the nature of the chromosomes.  The discovery that radiation induces mutation and what really is a mutation is something that Muller is obsessed with. He journeys from America to Russia to Scotland, changing the location of his labs as he bombards radiation on the chromosomes in a bid to understand the nature of the genetic material.

Into this milieu, Max Delbruck is sucked in after listening Niels Bohr's talk. He established the phage group- scientists working on bacteriophage in an attempt to understand genetics.

Seymour Benzer completes his Ph.D in physics and joins them as he wants to work on biophysics.  He is enchanted with the phages and after a period in Delbruck's lab and a year in Paris with Andre Lwoff, he starts his own research group in Purdue.  It is here he stumbles into a method to map the rII region (gene) of the T4 bacteriophage.  It takes him from 1954 to 1961 to create a genetic map of the region.  He shows that the rII gene is possibly divided into two regions and recombination between the two regions as well with a region was possible. This was the biggest contribution to the field of genetics.  

But what most fascinated me was that fact that he kept a detailed record of that period.  The work done everyday was recorded, analyzed, and a map drawn based on the results.  Something I wish my students would emulate.

The second most fascinating fact was the usage of the word 'gene'.

Gene was first coined by Johannsen but geneticists could not agree what the term meant.  The discovery that DNA was the genetic material followed by the structure of the DNA  did little to dispel the fuzziness of the term.  Benzer begins by using the term gene but is dissuaded by Alfred Hershey (of Hershey and Chase fame).  So he coins three terms- Recon to define a unit of recombination, muton to define a unit of mutation, and cistron to define a unit of physiological action.

Unfortunately, Holmes was ill and dies before he could complete the story that he had originally conceived. So the book sort of ends abruptly with the question still hanging as to when did the word 'gene' find acceptability.

In most modern textbooks, Benzer's experiments are either not mentioned or are mentioned too briefly to understand its importance.  Possibly in today's time, when sequencing so commonplace, it is not important. But his experiments were a major stepping block to our understanding of what a gene is.

Young Sheldon and would it happen in India

I have been watching Young Sheldon- the spin-off  of the Big Bang Theory.  This one features Sheldon and his family as he grows in Texas absolutely confident that he would win the Nobel Prize one day.  The series begins with the school recognizing that Sheldon is a genius and promoting him to the middle school.  Today episode was as usual hilarious.  A NASA scientist visits Sheldon's school and manages to put him down.  Sheldon sets out to prove that he is right and the NASA scientist is wrong.  The episode ends with a visit to the NASA center where the scientist admits that the idea (or rather the Math) is fantastic but they do not have the technical capability to put it into action.  Then a shot is shown of space program conducted by Elon Musk, essentially showing that Sheldon's idea has fructified.
But as the episode ended I wondered whether it would ever happen in India.  If a child was bright, would he/she be promoted or put through a special program for such children?  Would a child be encouraged to think out of the box?  Would such ideas be welcomed by our scientists?
I asked this especially as I got the feedback forms from my students yesterday. Till this year one of the senior professor was the coordinator of the course and he never took the feedback forms. But he retired and I became the coordinator of the course and of course, initiated feedback forms.  I took feedback both on the course and teaching methodology.  As I read the feedback, I was elated and sad. One of the students had written that this was first time he/she had been encouraged to do problem-solving and he/she was now getting the hang of it.  This reminded me of a student few years back. After she got into IISc that it was because of my teaching that she was able to answer analytical questions at the time of the interview.  Over the years there has been many such episodes. After one exam a student told me that it was so different from any exam she had taken for this was the first time she had been asked to think and analyze a piece of data.
"I enjoyed it so much, Ma'am," she said and I can never forget the joy on her face.
It is so sad. This is something they should have been encouraged to do right from school. It should not take a Master's level course to learn how to think or how to work around a problem or to analyze data.
As we dream of Nobel Prizes, we might want to get our basics right first.  Unless our children are allowed to dream and unleash their creativity, we are not going to get anywhere in the near future.