Only 5.2 Pct of Indian PhD Graduates Return From U.S.

Bangalore: Only 5.2 percent of Indians who go to the U.S. to earn a doctorate degree return home, says a study on the mobility patterns of PhD graduates in science, engineering and health, reported Vanita Srivastava for Hindustan Times.

As per the study ‘International Mobility and Employment Characteristics among Recent Recipients of U.S. Doctorates’ by the U.S. National Science Foundation around 5,000 Indians join U.S. universities every year for doctoral studies in these fields. The survey looked at students who graduated with PhDs between 2001 and 2007, indicating the brain drain in research that was thought to have reduced with India’s recent economic growth.

The survey also revealed that hardy 3.7 percent of Chinese scientists returned back to their home country. The percentage for Former Soviet Union was noted to be 4.1.

As per the study 87.9 percent of the PhD graduates were residing or employed in the U.S., 5.6 percent in Asia and 2.5 percent in Europe.

The study revealed that the foreign citizens' share of U.S.-earned doctorates increased from 17 percent during 1961–70 to 40 percent in 2010.

Further, as per another article in the journal Nature, India has the lowest proportion of foreign scientists, followed by Italy and Japan, but also the largest diaspora, with 40 percent of its home-born researchers working overseas. 75 percent of scientists go to the U.S.

The article says countries worry that they are losing their top researchers and India is also losing out in the race.