India’s PhD Boom and the Career Challenge - Article Summary - The Print

   

India has witnessed a major rise in PhD enrolments, increasing from 1.17 lakh in 2014–15 to about 3.44 lakh in 2023–24. The number of PhDs awarded has also grown significantly. The expansion of universities, research fellowships, growing interest in research and the discontinuation of the MPhil have contributed to this trend.

 

However, the growth in doctoral education has not been matched by enough career opportunities. Many PhD scholars face limited faculty positions, low-paid contractual teaching jobs, delayed recruitment and inadequate postdoctoral opportunities. As a result, several researchers are looking towards industry, corporate R&D, startups and overseas research positions.

 

The problem is particularly serious because India’s research ecosystem still has fewer researchers and less research infrastructure compared with countries such as China and the US. Experts argue that simply increasing the number of PhDs is not enough; India needs better funding, laboratories, postdoctoral programmes and stronger links between universities and industry.

 

The article also highlights the Professor of Practice model, which provides an alternative route for experienced professionals to enter academia. Industry-sponsored PhDs, joint research laboratories and industrial postdoctoral programmes could similarly broaden career opportunities.

 

The central issue, therefore, is not whether India should produce more PhDs, but whether it can create diverse, stable and meaningful careers for the growing number of people who earn them.

 

https://theprint.in/india/education/indias-witnessing-a-phd-boom-but-the-bigger-question-is-what-comes-after/3050778/

200 Papers in a Year: When AI Meets Academia - Article Summary

Nicholas Polson, a statistician and professor at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, has sparked debate after producing more than 200 research papers and being associated with 14 books in 2026. Polson has acknowledged using AI to assist with his work, saying that it makes routine research tasks much easier and allows him to work faster. The controversy intensified when SSRN removed 257 papers associated with Polson and froze the accounts used to submit them. While several papers reportedly lacked AI-use disclosures, SSRN said its primary concern was the unusual volume and pattern of submissions. Researchers have also questioned whether such a large number of papers can maintain the expected standards of academic quality. The episode highlights a broader challenge for academia. AI can help researchers with literature searches, data exploration and other routine tasks, but excessive or careless use could also result in fabricated citations, plagiarism, repetitive research and errors in analysis. Meanwhile, the growing number of submissions is placing additional pressure on already-strained peer-review systems. Polson insists that AI has simply accelerated his work and that he has genuinely worked on the problems addressed in his papers. The controversy ultimately raises a larger question for academia: As AI makes research faster and easier to produce, how can the academic system ensure that scholarship remains original, reliable and meaningful

https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2026/09/23/nine-months-200-academic-papers-one-professors-ai-assisted-output/

30623 - ams - commemoration digest - Life and Times of Czelaw Miloz

 

21623 - ams - Creativity and Anne Carson

Anne Carson is a lover of classical literature and her translations of classical writers such as Sappho and Euripides are popular. A high-school encounter with a Latin instructor, who agreed to teach her ancient Greek over the lunch hour, led to her passionate embrace of classical and Hellenic literature. Carson is a private person. She prefers to be alone. When her husband is traveling, Carson will call and tell him, “I miss you, but I’m having a great time.” Carson’s most popular book is the “Autobiography of Red,” which takes its cue from the legend of Hercules. The story is retold as a modern times and Carson makes some significant choices. In 2001, Carson published 'The Beauty of the Husband: A Fictional Essay in 29 Tangos' , a verse novel which was awarded the T.S. Eliot Prize. Carson continues to be an important and exciting translator of classical writers. Carson considers herself as a visual, not a verbal, artist. It is interesting to note that a new comic-book version of Euripides’s classic 'The Trojan Women', is published which us collaboration between the visual artist Rosanna Bruno and Anne Carson. It is a genuine representation of how human beings are affected by warfare.

 

14623 - ams - commemoration #1 - The book that launched a civil war - 'Uncle Tom's Cabin' remembered

 

Abraham Lincoln greeted Harriet Beecher Stowe with these words: "So you are the little woman who wrote the book that started this great war." ‘Uncle Tom's Cabin’ touched the hearts of northerners and forced them to fight against the Southerners and slavery. Harriet Beecher Stowe is recognized as a writer who played an important role in changing history with her book. She published the book in two volumes in 1852. Within the first year of publication, ‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin’ sold 300,000 copies. ‘Uncle Tom's Cabin’ has now been published in over 75 languages and is still an important text used in schools all over the world. This book was written at a time when women did not have a right to vote, have legal rights, or the right to speak in public meetings. One year after the publication of the book, she wrote another one titled ‘A Key to Uncle Tom’s Cabin’. This was done to defend her novel against her critics, who accused her of falsifying and exaggerating the novel’s representation of slavery. Harriet Beecher Stowe House is a project aimed at preserving the legacy of Harriet Beecher Stowe and the Beecher family home in Cincinnati, Ohio.

13-6-23 - ams - commemoration # 2 - Life and Times of Dorothy L Sayers

Dorothy L. Sayers is considered by many as a pre-eminent writer of mystery stories. She was quite scientific in her approach towards crime fiction. She is the inventor of the voice-activated lock featured in the 1928 short story ‘The Adventurous Exploit of the Cave of Ali Baba’. Dorothy L. Sayers is best known for her mysteries, a series of novels and short stories set between the First and Second World Wars that feature English aristocrat and amateur sleuth Lord Peter Wimsey, which remain popular to this day. However, Sayers herself considered her translation of Dante's Divine Comedy to be her best work. Miss Sayers was one of the first women to obtain an Oxford University degree after attending its Somerville College. She is also known for her plays, literary criticism, and essays. She was also a student of classical and modern languages. Her work, carefully researched and widely varied, included poetry, the editing of collections with her erudite introductions on the genre, and the translating of the Tristan of Thomas from mediaeval French. She admired E C Bentley and G K Chesterton and numbered among her friends T S Eliot, Charles Williams, and C S Lewis. During her latter years she abandoned crime fiction to write dramas and interpretive essays on the Christian religion. In her middle years she liked to drive a motorcycle.

 

12623 - after - commemorations - Karl Kraus - Life and Times

He was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature three times. Karl Kraus was the son of a wealthy Viennese paper merchant. Kraus also gave popular stage performances, in which he played piano, and read Shakespeare’s sonnets. He even acted out parts from his monumental masterpiece, the 800-page play, 'Die letzten Tage der Menschheit', usually translated as 'The Last Days of Mankind'. This play, which if performed in its entirety would take ten evenings. It is set in the early weeks of World War I, from the perspective of Vienna, then the capital of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. He is best known as editor of the literary journal Die Fackel (The Torch), which he founded in 1899. The objective of the journal was to hold a “torch” to the hypocrisy of German and Austrian society and the Austro-Hungarian government. Freud was one of the readers of Die Fackel around 1903 and mentioned it for the first time in 1905 in relation to his 'Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality'. Even today, Karl Krauss is widely discussed in German-language newspapers, and it speaks of his strong influence in German literature and cultural studies. He is also considered to be the first major European satirist since Jonathan Swift.

 

12623- ams - Commemorations - Harriet Martineau - Life and Times

Harriet Martineau is considered to be the first female sociologist. Harriet's education was largely at home through self study. University study was barred to women at the time, but Harriet maintained a regime of intense, self directed investigation throughout her life. When her family's wealth declined, she was able to earn money through writing essays, tracts, reviews, novels, journal articles, travelogues, biographies, how-to manuals, newspaper columns, histories, children's stories and sociologically informed non-fiction. She lived in London during a time when the social circles were quite active. The circle included: Charles Babbage, Thomas Carlyle, George Eliot, Florence Nightingale, Charles Dickens, Thomas Malthaus, William Wordsworth, Charlotte Bronte, and Charles Darwin. Her trip to America resulted in two books based on empirical research, 'Society in America' (1837) and 'Retrospect of Western Travel' (1838). She examined social class, religion, suicide, national character, domestic relations, women's status, criminology, and interrelations between institutions and individuals before Marx, Engels or Weber 

Tintin Connections

Sir Galahad in Arthurian legend is a knight of King Arthur's Round Table and one of the three achievers of the Holy Grail. He is the illegitimate son of Sir Lancelot and Elaine of Corbenic and is renowned for his gallantry and purity as the most perfect of all knights. Emerging quite late in the medieval Arthurian tradition, Sir Galahad first appears in the Lancelot–Grail cycle, and his story is taken up in later works such as the Post-Vulgate Cycle and Sir Thomas Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur. (Wikipedia)

Faust and Marguerite is a romantic opera in three acts, dating from 1855, based on the Faust legend. The score was composed by Meyer Lutz. The libretto was written by Henri Drayton based on the Johann Wolfgang von Goethe play Faust. The 1900 film Faust and Marguerite is an adaptation of the play. It was directed by Edwin S. Porter, three years before he directed The Great Train Robbery. (Wikipedia)