Foreign universities that would come scouting for young teachers to theIndian Institutes of Technology were conspicuously missing this recruitment season. But a range of private and deemed Indian universities from across the country did land up offering hardly attractive pay scales defined under the Sixth Pay Commission.

When they were pitted against the big guns-the consulting and finance offers-the IITs realized that the PhD jinx continues to haunt them. Every tech school recorded a higher average salary figure for their BTechs as compared to their PhD fellows, most of who joined research labs or signed up for teaching positions .