Murthy is unahppy with the fact that IITs produce very few world class researchers. He said in 2004, China produced 2,652 PhDs in Computer Science while in that year, India produced only 24. He added that the situation is worrisome. The focus on research has diminished in IITs and that’s not the way to go about it. Murthy said, “In the last 15 to 20 years, IITs have lost all the sheen that they had once upon a time. In 1967, at the electrical engineering department of IIT-Kanpur there were about 60 to 70 students registered for PhD. But today, at the same department if there are five PhD students joining in a year, that would be fantastic.” He further added that even the gold medalists from IITs were at a loss when they pursue their research in other foreign institutes like MIT, Harvard or Standford.
