New Delhi — India’s engineering colleges remain primarily teaching institutions and have not evolved into vibrant research institutions because only a tiny percentage of engineering graduates opts to pursue master’s or doctoral degrees here, says “Engineering Education in India,” a report scheduled for release on Saturday, according to a local newspaper.

India graduates fewer than 1,000 Ph.D.’s in engineering annually, despite producing some 240,000 basic engineering graduates every year, because most of them enter the job market or move to the United States for advanced education, according to the report, which was based on a study by Rangan Banerjee and Vinayak P. Muley, professors at Mumbai’s Indian Institute of Technology.

Even the seven vaunted Indian Institutes of Technology are unable to keep their best engineering graduates for doctoral degrees. Only 1 percent of students earning bachelor-of-technology degrees choose to pursue a master’s degree and only 2 percent of master’s recipients opt for doctorates. By contrast, Indians made up 10 percent of the science and engineering Ph.D.’s awarded in the United States from 1998 to 2001, the report says.

“There is a general perception that research opportunities and facilities in U.S. are the best,” Mr. Banerjee is quoted as saying. “Students also manage well-paying fellowships and are easily absorbed by the industry, which is not the case in India. Doing a Ph.D. is seen as time-consuming, and usually students want to take up a job right after their degree,” he said.

The report recommends that India reverse the pattern by starting a national Ph.D. program to offer fellowships of around $600 a month, and industry support for 5,000 fellowships a year. —Shailaja Neelakantan