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Indian College Students Face Bleak Prospects
Posted by
kdawson
on Tue Dec 05, 2006 02:58 PM
from the firm-handshake-and-accentless-English dept.
from the firm-handshake-and-accentless-English dept.
The New York Times has a piece on the lackluster prospects facing the great majority of Indian college graduates. Most of the 11 million students in India's 18,000 colleges and universities receive starkly inferior training, according to the article, heavy on obedience and rote memorization and light on useful job skills. From the article: "In the 2001 census, [Indian] college graduates had higher unemployment — 17 percent — than middle or high school graduates... [At a middle-tier college] dozens of students swarmed around a reporter to complain about their education. 'What the market wants and what the school provides are totally different,' a commerce student said.... [A] final-year student who expects next year to make $2 to $4 a day hawking credit cards, was dejected. 'The opportunities we get at this stage are sad,' she said. 'We might as well not have studied.'"
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This is where college went wrong (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:This is where college went wrong (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:This is where college went wrong (Score:5, Insightful)
Are you serious? I highly recommend college just for the enjoyment part of it. I had more fun in college than at any other time in my life. Plus, the connections and friendships that I made there are extremely valuable.
Go there to learn, to learn how to learn, to learn skills (the easy part), and to socialize (the important part). -ec
Re:This is where college went wrong (Score:5, Insightful)
I do know why. It's because you (and presumably your friend) majored in Computer Science, not software engineering.
What I don't understand is why you sought a degree in Computer Science if you just wanted the skills to write corporate database applications. That's not what Computer Science is.
Re:This is where college went wrong (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:This is where college went wrong (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:This is where college went wrong (Score:5, Interesting)
I had friends in Georgia Tech who were decent Java programmers who did miserable in their introductory programming classes because the professor chose an extremely obscure language that no one knew beforehand. This way, he knew that no one came in who knew programming, but didn't know the concepts. By choosing a weird language, he could force concepts first, specific languages later. They hated it, got a poor grade, but came out better programmers.
On the same note, a mathematician does not differentiate between solutions of ax^2 + bx + c = 0 and x^2 + 5x + 1 = 0; knowing how to solve the quadratic equation is the important part, the second is just an example to make the theory easier.
Re:This is where college went wrong (Score:5, Insightful)
There is no comparison between US college education and the middle-tier Indian colleges being discussed. From TFA:
The problem isn't one of teaching intellectual disciplines versus practical skills. The problem is that Indian colleges are teaching neither.
Wrong for a college, but right for a trade school. (Score:5, Insightful)
What most students want is job skills. Few students have the inclination (or spare funds) to learn for the sake of learning for four years, and then spend another two or three at a trade/professional school, before they can get a real position.
Students go to various schools in great part because of the job prospects they think they'll have on completion. Only the rich can afford to simply go because it will be intellectually stimulating. Plus, mixing together people who just want job training with people who are fundamentally interested in learning is a mistake; neither are going to be satisfied with the results.
To be honest, I think we need to remove some of the social stigma surrounding trade schools in the U.S., and we should have a clear path for students that just want to get job skills. Maybe the companies themselves could even help fund them, and in return get to dictate parts of the curriculum (via directed tax contributions, if not voluntarily). That would remove the education/industry disconnect. Students who wanted an 'education' would be able to go to college, and students who want 'job training' and a near-guaranteed job in a relatively short amount of time could go to the trade schools.
I think in the U.S. we have dragged 'childhood' further and further out; there is no reason why a person should have to go through nineteen or twenty years of schooling before they can survive on their own in the economy. Education needs to be made more relevant to what students want to learn, and more rigorous earlier in the curriculum. Huge swaths of my own education were nothing but wasted time because of the way the system is currently set up; there is no reason why a motivated 15 or 16-year-old shouldn't be able to be out learning a skill, if that's what they want to do. Making them acquire thousands of dollars in debt and years of wasted 'education' that they won't use first, helps no one.
Well then, outsource! (Score:5, Funny)
Well, Indian companies, if your universities are turning out graduates of sub-par, and you're no longer pleased to being able to bringing products to markets in a timely manner, please to be introducing you a land where you can be outsourcing your business products and services. This land is being called America! And you can be outsourcing your technical business to it!
(We are apologizing for the quality of the technical support and code we send back. We are knowing that "Howdy Y'all! My name is Jethro! How can ah help y'all with yer blinkinlights?" and "Segmentation pwnage, core dumped, dude" isn't quite what you're used to receiving, but remember... you do get what you pay for.)
Welcome to America! (Score:4, Insightful)
"What the market wants and what the school provides are totally different," a commerce student, Sohail Kutchi, said.
Ironically, American businesses, i.e., tech companies, complain about the samething with U.S. Universities.
Re:Welcome to America! (Score:5, Insightful)
Use college funds for I'net for ideas, skills (Score:4, Interesting)
- Gather into small Learning Cells (about 5 students / cell)
- Setup Internet-based home study centers (eg, share houses
with FAST Internet on each of their computers)
- discuss ideas, develop skills (technical, entrepreneurial) & knowledge
from Internet sources, courses & talks
- publish & exchange ideas with similar groups
- start on-line businesses
:
- profit & live well...
Re:Use college funds for I'net for ideas, skills (Score:5, Funny)
Obedience (Score:5, Informative)
When I was recruiting a replacement for me in my previous job as a financial analyst, the obedience aspect was the reason I rejected all Indian candidates. None of them, despite very high qualifications, didn't even make it to the second round, because the job required a high degree of personal initiative. I simply kept running into such a strong culture of obedience, that sometimes I had the feeling I was talking to computers: very fast, very good at what they were doing, but offering zero dissent or showing any desire to do anything on their own. A human garbage-in-garbage-out system.
college? (Score:3, Insightful)
I see this EVERYDAY!!! (during an outsourcing) (Score:4, Insightful)
I can't for the life of me remember my
IT people that can't fix their own MS word problems...
give them instructions on step by step how to do something, no problem. Give them an exe and tell them to install a program, it'll never happen.
Everyone I've talked to says the same thing. give them a structured problem and they knock it outa the park. give them an open ended real world problem without structure given to them, and they are lost.
It makes me feel good about myself and the ability to think, and figure out what concept to apply and how to apply it...
IIT (Score:5, Informative)
Re:IIT (Score:5, Informative)
Read the article again. The article talks about how IIT graduates are doing well in the industry because of their high quality of teaching. The main focus of the article, however, is on other Indian universities, not IIT (which is one of the best schools in the world).
Prospects (Score:5, Interesting)
Speaking as a college CS/Network graduate whom, 2 years after graduating, is still working as a janitor, allow me to welcome you to this planet.
In my case, it's not because I have inferior skills or training. It's because most employers I've had contact with see a diploma/degree as "quaint" and "irrelevant". Since I don't have 5+ years of experience, excellent "soft skills" (PHB corporate-speak if I've ever heard it), and I don't want to sell anything, I'm apparently unemployable, no matter what school I went to or how well I did.
Here's a brief story that gives contrast to the wonderfully frustrating experience I've been putting up with for over 2 years: I have a friend (who dropped out of highschool no less) who works in IT. One of his co-workers, a supposed IT expert who makes ~$100k a year, recently said to him "I assume we'll be using FAT32 for our 1TB backup drive's filesystem?". It seems to me, someone making $100k/year in IT should be aware of things like the limitations of FAT32 and Windows' implementation thereof. My friend tells me this sort of ineptitude is common among the IT "experts" he works with, and he spends more time correcting their mistakes than doing his own work. Meanwhile, I can't even get an *interview* for entry level jobs that a highschool student could perform.
Not that I'm bitter or anything. Anyways, back to washing floors so I can make my student loan payments. Thanks for listening
Re:Prospects (Score:5, Insightful)
Most employers do not see degrees as quaint. Experience rules for senior positions, but entry level positions are made for recent grads. A problem you are going to face is that you're graduation is becoming less recent all the time. I hope you are keeping up on your skills and continuing your education. Do some volunteer IT or try to make yourself visible on some open source projects.
Where I work, we turn away people with very good resumes all the time if we don't think the person would fit in. I'm not going to hire somebody unless I think I'm going to enjoy working with them. Think about it- you probably spend more time with people in your office than with your significant other.
We've also hired some people with unrelated degrees to do some of the most demanding work here (our network admin has a degree in german language).
Lastly, what are you doing to expand your people network? Often who you know is more important that what you know. I used to think this was awful, but now I think it's because people are very afraid of risk and the unknown. Find other nerds and find out what they are doing. Interview at their company after you have thoroughly researched whatever it is they do.
-ec
Re:Prospects (Score:5, Interesting)
As an employer, I can tell you that we're well aware of the deficiencies of education, especially in technical fields. We know it emphasizes ivory-tower theory, not practical solutions, and good listening to authority, not the cut-and-thrust compromise and jury-rig of the rambunctious real-world contest between those bastards in Marketing and us bastards in Development. We are also sadly aware of the grade and "AP class" inflation going on, we know very well an A doesn't mean stellar work anymore, and a B a significant cut above average. We know grades and taking "Honors" classes hardly mean a damn thing anymore.
So, yes, we do look for more concrete measures of competence. Something like experience and success in a similar job, a certain amount of dedication and willingness to learn, a lack of rigidity about what you will and won't dirty your hands doing (e.g. God help you if you routinely volunteer the fact during interviews that you refuse to do any selling).
If you didn't know this before, and so didn't spend your summers and after-school and between-school time enhancing your competitiveness, or, worse, didn't even realize you were in a competition with a million other hungry souls -- if you vaguely thought you were living in a socialist paradise where purity of soul guaranteed you your daily bread -- then I'm real sorry for the Big Lie your teachers amused themselves telling you, but there it is. The real world doesn't, in fact, give a damn about you, and will cheerfully let you starve to death unless in its eyes you have something quite valuable to offer. Fortunately, being young, if you were operating under any illusions you have time to make corrections.
Also...don't forget to give it some time. Very few people get a great job right out of school. Usually it takes a few years to find something nice, and many people have to work for a decade or more to find a position that really suits them. Don't give up, keep trying, it will come if you persist. (And don't forget to feed back your experience to those younger than yourself every chance you get, so the dippy delusions rampant in our Sesame Street educational system are somewhat less effective.)
Re:Prospects (Score:5, Funny)
Why thinking outside the box is a good thing (Score:5, Interesting)
One thing I will say about Indian college graduates is that they *tend* not to think outside the box. If the solution wasn't painfully obvious or spelled out in the textbook or lecture notes, then some of the Indian students would run into serious problems. Also some Indian students would ace courses which required large amounts of memorization but would fail practical courses.
Re:Why thinking outside the box is a good thing (Score:4, Informative)
More factors (Score:5, Interesting)
If you are not an engineer or a doctor, then you are nobody. This is an outlook that is very prevalent among Indian parents - there are only two professional areas worth studying (although MBA has recently joined the two) for any indian student. All other fields (pure sciences, arts, humanities, commerce etc) are considered last resorts and muster very little respect. Graduates in such areas are not as esteemed or valued as their engineer friends, thus they receive less exposure and lesser opportunities.
Which college do you go to? the one on this end of the street or the one on the other end? as a result of this idolatry of disciplines, engineering colleges and medical schools are cropping up like mushrooms everywhere. starting an engineering college is a very easy and profitable business venture in India. This proliferation of institutions (with the wrong motives) thus leads to subpar standards of education - so even the engineers/doctors now are not trained properly in basic skills.
Universities are not for teaching communication skills. That's what society is for. if you cannot converse well with others, if you cannot carry yourself with confidence and in general cannot interact socially, then it's probably not the college's fault. it is up to the students to read non-curricular english books (which a college cannot, and shouldn't force), to form groups, try out new ideas and socialise more. Being anglicised, active and outgoing should not be considered a stigma anymore, and certainly should not be considered unpatriotic. The mindsets of students (and more importantly, of overbearing parents) should adapt to these new circumstances.
There are more things than thick-accented teachers and archaic teaching methods at fault here. In a developing country like India where opportunities and population continue to explode at a devilish pace, the competition will only grow fiercer and it takes more than passive complaining about teachers to succeed.
India ailing! (Score:5, Interesting)
Computer Education in India (Score:5, Informative)
NOTE: The following is also a rant, if you read it you can understand how dissatisfied I am with wasting several years to get a stupid paper certificate which I am not in the least bit proud of. Be warned that this is all highly subjective and biased opinion.
The syllabus for any degree in India is revised very infrequently, maybe once every 5 or 10 years - this is especially bad for a fast-changing field like computers, I guess it may be OK for mature disciplines such as mechanical or civil engineering. The first year of the 4 year Bachelor of Engineering (B.E.) course for *any* specialization (computers, electronics, mechanical
1. How cement is mixed etc. (in Chemistry)
2. Engineering drawing (isometric projection etc., useful in Civil Engg.)
3. Mechanical engg. concepts like stresses and struts (no, not Java Struts!
Now, I can understand that students need to be exposed to different fields so they can decide which one they want etc. - but why do you have to waste an entire year after someone has decided his trade, just for the 0.001% of people who might wish to change professions?
Unlike many people, I went into C.S. (its actually called Computer Engg. degree) because I like programming, not just because of earning potential. As such, I had grouped with a couple of friends and we tried to make small programs, games etc. even before entering college. Now, the only first year subject relevant to C.S. is Computer Programming - where we are initiated into the mysteries of Pascal. In the first semester (we have 2 semesters in a year btw.), I got an assignment to print 1 to 10 as output. When I hand it in, I actually get told off by the teacher for using the 'for' loop - since we hadn't got to that stage in the syllabus, it was Not Allowed to use looping constructs! This should give you some idea of the quality of teaching in our hallowed halls of learning. I quickly learned to keep inquisitive experimentation seperate from class assignments, and got through college by copying almost all assignments (which activity is *very* common btw.)
The teaching staff in most Indian colleges is abysmal, due to extremely poor salary the only people who end up there are rejects from industry who would never get a job elsewhere. I doubt most could even hold a data entry position - there were the few intelligent teachers who did explain and teach well, but they were a minority. Also, when I write a board exam the paper will be corrected by some random teacher, who might be illiterate for all I know.
If questions are based on solved problems in standard textbooks, the teacher will likely expect the exact same answer - if you use a 'while' loop instead of 'for', it might not satisfy the prof. who only wants similar structure and doesn't understand there is more than one way to do a problem. In this environment, how do you expect anyone to use modular structure, descriptive variable names or recursion etc.?
The problem of 'should be done acc. to the textbook' applies in other disciplines too - although I read a lot, when answering an English paper I wouldn't dream of using abstruse erudite diction as it would be incomprehensible to the examiner. In other words, we're actually taught to use small words since few teachers would understand complex verbiage.
Passing college exams in India is not done through understanding the course material and applying learned concepts, this would be a foreign concept to most Indian students. The right way to pass, is of cour
An American in India (Score:5, Interesting)
I had the unique opportunity to work at an Indian web design firm as a project manager and technology coach. I was directly involved in screening and interviewing job applicants, and I agree many of the observations noted in the article. As nearly 100% of our clients are western companies, solid English skills are a must. We cannot compromise on this requirement, and even the office runner is required to take English classes.
To give an example of the problems with the Indian education system. One applicant brought in her senior design project, a full website, to impress us at an interview. Problem #1, every file she brought was infected with a virus. Problem #2, it was a complete patchwork job from a free scripts site (copyrights intact) pieced together with about 5% her code. Problem #3, she didn't understand the code she ripped off well enough to change a simple menu item. Problem #4, this had received a 100% grade towards her graduation. She was rewarded for searching the internet and creating a website via copy/paste. She was not taught how to create, only how to duplicate.
Any Indian with money can get a masters degree. If you pay your bill at exam time, they will pass you onto the next level. During the time I was in India, a major university was forced to shut down because of student protesting. They were protesting exam fraud investigations of the graders the university employed. Master's level exams were being graded by 10 year-olds based on: length, neatness of writing, number of paragraphs, and the 'prettiness' of the graphs. I think this is where the University of Phoenix got its model for taking people's money.
I absolutely loved my time in India, and I am not trying to bash the country. I just want to share my limited exposure to the reported problem.
Re:So... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:So... (Score:5, Insightful)
Spoken plainly as one who doesn't use any advanced algorithms in their coding. Lemme guess, you paint forms and play with DB rows?
Let me enlighten you: The heart of Computer Science is ALL "math crap".
Re:So... (Score:5, Insightful)
It's been said before in the perspective of not knowing how things work on the inside (especially in language wars) but I've run into more junior programmers that don't understand how to analyze and debug systems because of a simple ignorance of the "magic" of , be it networking, compilers, operating systems, sparse and/or associative arrays, code optimization in large scalable systems, the network stack, internal type representation, threading, memory usage, security...
In each of these topics, I've been on a team of programmers that simply wrote VB-style windows apps for so long they couldn't tackle a bug in one of these more difficult issues. I don't advocate that every programmer needs to learn all these topics before starting, but they have to know that there are layers beneath the tool, and that such layers are subject to examination.
Even now, I'm reengineering a large-scale system that made some horrible scalability decisions. They had a simple point-click, drag-drop style of application construction, and couldn't understand how to optimize for the real-world data throughput the end product needed to satisfy. So here I am, the "math guy", ripping out chunks of tool-generated sequential searches, file caches, and other endless layers, to streamline.
SO I argue that the *jobs* will always have a mix of programmer types, but if you hire only mousemonkeys, you're risk not having a skillset ready to tackle the "difficult" things.
Re:So... (Score:5, Insightful)
My complaint is that most schools don't teach good large project management skills. Everybody works on toy programs by themselves or in small groups and on short deadlines. That is highly unrealistic in the real world and teaches the kids a lot of bad habits IMHO. I think it would be better if the schools put more emphasis on project management (both from a manager and coder perspective), including version control, planning, testing, debugging, and so forth. Grading would be a bit more difficult, but the ability to compare students based on their amount and general quality (how many fixes did it require afterward?) of checkins would be a good place to start.
The class could even mix it up a bit between writing their own project and maintain last year's project, especially if they build stuff that is actually useful and post it online. Granted, this is an ambitious project for a classroom, but I think it's the only way to properly prepare students for the real world.
Absolutely. (Score:5, Insightful)
There's way too much emphasis on starting your own projects from a clean slate, which is very rare in the 'real world.' More often you get handed the spaghetti-code mess of the "last guy," to puzzle over and figure out how to document and maintain.
Too much CS education is focused on the very beginning of the software lifecycle. That's like churning out doctors that can only deliver babies, when what the market needs are GPs and geriatric specialists. Grads need to know not only how to start a new project themselves, but how to pick up one that's in the middle of development, or that's well into its maintenance phase.
Re:So... (Score:4, Insightful)
Well, duh. They should have taken a programming course. Studying CS to learn programming is like studying Economics when you want to go into business - economics and business are both about money, after all.
The problem is that stupid companies think programmers with a degree are better, even though there are no university level programming degrees.
(spoken as a programmer with a CS degree, but I got it because I love math and theory)
Re:So... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:So... (Score:4, Funny)
I know *I* can't. Damn proprietary hardware. Anyone ever seen an API for paper bags, specifically wet ones? Damn hard to find one.
Now... *plastic* bags, that's another thing. I can code my way out of all kinds of plastic bags. But hey... who can't?
Re:So... (Score:4, Interesting)
Yes, and I will let you explain why:
They spent all their time learning about useless crap like advanced multivariable calculus, matrix theory...
That "useless crap" is why American students are considerably more well rounded than our foreign counterparts (who are usually fed a steady diet of vanilla teachings for their future as cheap labor). I can understand their anger, since they are given no options to ever succeed in life.
Re:Let me just be the first to ask: (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Let me just be the first to ask: (Score:5, Insightful)
What's annoying about the Indians taking the calls is that they pretend to understand when you use words or phrases they don't get, and it quickly becomes apparent as they struggle to troubleshoot a problem they never comprehended in the first place. But they're taught to do this, just like they're taught to tell me their name is Steve or John or Bob. Again, it's really the fault of the company putting the almighty dollar ahead of customer satisfaction.
Re:Let me just be the first to ask: (Score:5, Funny)
And this is different from American customer service how?
Re:Let me just be the first to ask: (Score:5, Insightful)
I'll just put it this way: I've never had to explain the same situation three times to the same person or had a tech doggedly stick to the script regardless of what I told them when talking to an American. I've worked in tech support before and have *seen* some American script monkeys at work, but it's almost a policy for the Indian (and other) call centers to rely entirely on scripts.
Example: if I tell "Joe" that I've got a problem with my new wireless NIC and I need to know where I can enter the SSID in the software, it should be clear to him that I know what the problem is and what I need to do to fix it. What does he do? Force me to go through twenty minutes of uninstalling, reinstalling, PULLING THE CARD TO GET THE MODEL NUMBER, before finally putting me on hold for ten minutes to get someone else on the phone who knows the answer to my question.
Maybe the problem is what is talked about in the article: they're trained on rote memorization, not troubleshooting. They don't know how to deviate from the norm and jump straight to a solution.
Re:Let me just be the first to ask: (Score:4, Insightful)
I was a support monkey myself at one time in the past. I memorized a lot of the most common problems but I still got in trouble a lot for making sure the customer's system was working before hanging up with them. I had a low reopen rate but that wasn't the stat they were looking at. They just wanted calls closed per hour.
Having been in that position myself I know what dealing an irate customer can be like, but by the same token there's no better way to make me irate than to do a half-assed job of helping me, even if that's not technically what your job description is. Thus my rule of thumb is to escallate early and escallate often for technical problems. Most of the time they're just as happy to get rid of you and move on to the next guy and you can move on to someone who actually knows what they're doing.
Re:Let me just be the first to ask: (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Let me just be the first to ask: (Score:5, Funny)
I recently had to call a tech support line for a company which I knew outsourced it's call center support to India. The girl on the other end of the line called herself "Irene" and talked like a California Valley Girl (if I hadn't known that the call center was in India, I would have been fooled). It was kind of a turn-on knowing that she was working so hard to fulfill my fantasy that I was talking to an American girl. It made me wonder if I could convince her to wear a cheerleader outfit or a french maid uniform or something.
Re:Let me just be the first to ask: (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Let me just be the first to ask: (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem with farming out the "easy stuff" is that is what most entry level people cut their teeth on out in the business world. If you take away the things that the entry level people are qualified to do, they never get the chance to become senior level.
With that simple move, you've cut the legs out from under your technical competence as a society and are now at the mercy of others. This, by the way, is a great way to cause an economic collapse and possibly another depression.
Re:PragDave has a great blog entry on this... (Score:4, Interesting)
I saw the presentation he mentioned and there's no clear answer at the end of it
to the question "where to tomorrow's novices opportunities come from?".
Outsourcing today takes the opportunity to gain footing on the
bottom 2-3 rungs off the 5 step skills ladder. We can't all be advanced
and experts without having spent the time to get there.
Where indeed. But it's really worse than he lets on because being an expert doesn't mean you'll never have to climb that ladder again. You will if you wish to continue doing technical work. I've already had to because the vast majority of jobs in the electronics industry were outsourced. The second climb has felt quite a bit steeper than the first.
Most people who become an expert in a technical field only climb this skills ladder once. I've met several dozen who have done it twice and in some cases, it's really stretching a point to include some of them in that number. Such people are unusual. I've met 2 individuals who successfully made drastic career changes into 3 technical fields.
I don't know whether I can do it again. Nor do I have any idea what change to make. At least when electronics was on the decline, software loomed. There ain't much light ahead.
The implications are grim.
Re:Let me just be the first to ask: (Score:4, Insightful)
It's nit picking, but to throw about the term so lightly is to dishonor people who actually had to endure true slavery.
Re:Let me just be the first to ask: (Score:5, Informative)
Another interesting fact about slavery is that it is approved of by all three major mono-theistic religions. As an example, the Bible defines slave trading as sinful, but not slave ownership. Slaves won through conquest or debt are considered just.