Why early-career academics in India are walking away from research

A significant development in Indian higher education has not yet found a place in public discourse. A steady stream of young Ph.D.s, who once dreamed of spending their lives teaching, reading, and thinking, are quietly walking away from universities. Many shift to think-tanks, NGOs, Edtech firms, or corporate research units while others prepare for the civil services. Some others drift into unrelated work, unsure of their next step, but clear about one thing: academia no longer feels like a viable or meaningful future. This slow exit raises a question: why are the people trained to become scholars choosing not to pursue a scholarly career?

Change in character

The answer lies in the changing character of the university. Over the past decade, the institution that once promised intellectual freedom, community, and the luxury of deep thinking has turned into a compliance-heavy and metric-driven workplace. What was once a profession rooted in curiosity has become a maze of checklists, rankings, and deadlines. Young academics are realising that the intellectual life they imagined bears little resemblance to the institutional life they now face.

Nowhere is this more visible than in the way research is treated. In theory, research is the heart of academic life. But, in reality, it has been reduced to an administrative task. Appraisal systems and accreditation demands mean research matters only after it can be counted. A publication is valued not for its argument but for its appearance in a Scopus-indexed journal. A citation counts not because it shapes debate but because it boosts a metric. Young scholars quickly learn that they must publish constantly, whether or not they have something meaningful to say. They chase citation-rich topics, trendy areas, and quick-turnaround journals. They prioritise speed over depth and visibility over substance. All this while managing heavy teaching loads, committee work, mentoring responsibilities, accreditation preparation, and, often, contracts that may or may not be renewed.

The irony is obvious. A system claiming to promote research excellence now encourages scholars to produce superficial, hurried, and formulaic work. The more we try to measure quality, the more we end up distorting it. Metrics now dominate every corner of university life. National Assessment and Accreditation Council (NAAC) scores, National Institutional Ranking Framework (NIRF) rankings, Academic Performance Indicator (API) points, impact factors, citation counts, revenue targets, student satisfaction surveys … all these numbers govern what faculty do, how they spend their time, and what they prioritise. Metrics were introduced for accountability, but they have grown into an ideology. They determine whether teaching “counts”, which activities are “productive”, and how academic time should be allocated. Inevitably, teaching suffers. When promotions depend on research and documentation, young teachers often rush through classes so they can return to tasks that earn points.

However, the real crisis for young academics is not workload but precarity. Many early-career faculty work on contractual or ad-hoc appointments, with low pay, no security, and the constant need to reapply. This is a built-in aspect of how institutions operate, relying on a rotating pool of inexpensive teachers. For young scholars, this uncertainty is crippling. It makes long-term research difficult, disrupts personal decisions, and turns an academic career into a gamble.

Emotional cost

There is also an emotional cost that is rarely acknowledged. Many young academics enter the university for the love of ideas, but soon find themselves spending more time uploading documents than reading, writing, or teaching. They seek meaningful engagement, but face endless compliance work; they want to contribute to knowledge, but end up chasing deadlines Bureaucracy slowly drains their enthusiasm. Institutions so consumed by performative activity end up draining the intellectual life out of the very people who sustain them.

This shift matters far beyond individual careers. A country cannot build a knowledge economy if its best minds feel pushed out of the institutions meant to nurture them. Universities cannot claim excellence while treating young scholars as expendable. If India hopes to be an innovation hub or a global academic destination, reform must start with supporting the people who produce knowledge by reducing dependence on crude metrics, providing more stable positions, and offering genuine time and autonomy for research. Ultimately, we must decide whether we want universities that generate documents or ones that generate ideas.

The writer is a former professor and dean, Christ University, Bengaluru.