PhD students face difficulties in completing their research due to the pandemic

The current Covid – 19 pandemic has affected more than a million research students complete their PhD program. With labs locked due to University shutdown, many students find it difficult to do research and add on their finding in their final thesis. Also working from, many PhD guides find it difficult to guide these students as they themselves are busy conducting their online classes.

Vidhi Verma, 25, a PhD student from IIT said ” We are in a big dilemma as to whether we should continue our research or drop the PhD and find a job to sustain ourselves.”

Most of the research involves practical work along with going on to field to collect data for their final hypothesis. While these tours have dried up the constant pressure to complete the thesis have made things worse.

While talking to Homework Guru, Harsha, a chemistry researcher from Indore revealed that most of their equipment’s and chemicals was damaged because of long lockdown in their city. This decreased their efficiency of work also forcing them to re perform some of the experiments again and again.

She continued that Restriction of communication have caused poor mental health among the researchers who are living alone and far away from their family.

The greatest hit are International students who were somehow struck in India and thus could not go to their University to complete their research. These students, most of them working on internship saw their funding dried up which overall impacted their research. Mohit, a student from University of Waterloo, told us that he is planning to drop the idea altogether and then start again once the pandemic is over.

Overall we can say that the situation is critical and need immediate attention from the Government.