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The most prized degree in India became the most worthless

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Re: The most prized degree in India became the most worthless

#151

Post by bsder »

triceratops wrote: post #124
downerending wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The number of universities where you can actually become a good engineer is really small, apart from the IIT/NIT/BITS/IIIT, the rest can be categorized into mediocre to astonishingly bad. I wonder why this is. It doesn't seem like it would be that hard to teach basic CS well, nor would I think that India would lack for competent people able to teach this way. Does this occur in other parts of Indian society? For ex…

> It doesn't seem like it would be that hard to teach basic CS well Why do you think so? If anything it's harder than doing a regular programming job, because in addition to knowing CS, you have to know how to teach. And programming pays better than teaching.

> And programming pays better than teaching.

Let's quantify that since most people don't understand just how bad the discrepancy is.

A lecturer in CS might get $4000 for a semester. That's 12+weeks at 40 hours a week of work preparing the lectures, grading, preparing tests, and answering student questions via email. Not joking.

That's right around minimum wage in most civilized places in the US (about $8 an hour).

I presume the discrepancy is much worse in other countries.

Re: The most prized degree in India became the most worthless

#152

Post by mattkrause »

mywittyname wrote: post #79
jeromegv wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Canada you can't call yourself an engineer unless you studied engineering in university and went through licensing. It's not really enforced in tech, but for me the definition is someone who at the minimum studied an engineering degree. Calling yourself an engineer when you studied Computer Science is a bit odd to me.

Lots of CS programs in the US are accredited by ABET [1] (our professional engineering standards board) and graduates from said programs are eligible to take the PE exam. I call myself an engineer and is anyone has a problem with that, I just point out that I graduated from an engineering college and am eligible to become a PE, and will, should the world ever decide that's an important credential for building softwar…

That list has some rather notable omissions. Stanford isn’t on there, nor is CMU, nor any of the Ivies besides UPenn.

This frustrates me because ABET degrees are required for a bunch of government jobs (and the patent bar). While it might make sense for certain fields, it’s silly to gate CS jobs on a credential that the field evidentially doesn’t take seriously.

Re: The most prized degree in India became the most worthless

#153

Post by TedDoesntTalk »

andrewflnr wrote: post #110
onetimeusename wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Something similar happened in the US where numbers of students in CS went up over time. However, academic fraud has not been as big of a problem as it is in India. An Indian friend of mine said that IIT is good but hardly anyone can get in and the caste system dictates admissions policies anyway so many people try to get engineering degrees from schools with lax standards. The professors are completely unqualified, a…

> ...and the caste system dictates admissions policies anyway Like, officially, in writing? Even if it's informal, as an American it blows my mind that that's still a thing.

Are you really naive enough to think that American standards are global standards? You should really get out of the country more, read books by non-American authors, and most especially -- befriend non-Americans.

Re: The most prized degree in India became the most worthless

#154

Post by _630w »

cmckn wrote: post #102
kls wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I posted a comment a while back about this subject and the funny part was I got flamed by a bunch of US based technical workers, while the Indian techies pretty much agreed with me. Anyways the TLDR was I have a buddy Karthick and he is one of the best developers I know. So I asked him one day about why there was such low quality in India and he explained to me it was misaligned incentives due to the fact that, the f…

I've had similar conversations. These guys were pretty open about the fact that they crammed for exams and didn't take undergrad very seriously. People that are in tech for the money is common everywhere, but there is definitely something unique about the Indian experience.

Unusually high number of openly abusive schools and parents.

90% of my class cheated in some form on regular exams until 10th grade. This was known by the management and teachers often hide it. They also increased marks of students by changing their answers lol. Discouraging environment for actual students.

Why?

Because education is a business. Metrics such as 90 percentile scored so and so drives admission rates.

why cheat?

Because lack of good parenting, teachers and dysfunctional infra. Most teachers outside of few top schools are "failures" (not literally) in private schools where they are spending their time trying to crack exams for government jobs or getting another degree. They don't care or aren't paid enough.

Parents won't help their kids or take much interest in what they like. They will be pretty thorough when investigating report cards and standardized bullshit metrics that indian schools make (outside of board) but shallow when empathising with their kids.

Tuition is a widely common practice in india which is similar to daycare in practice, I guess. It gives off an effect of your kid working... Whenever someone gets a bad grade, the first thing to do is increase their tuition time. My previous schools had same teachers taking tuition at home and an after school program. You will get questions and stuff that will come in exam by going there. It was public knowledge too. Most schools are shady. I can't remember one where I didn't see some bs going on like messing with paperwork for tax fraud (openly), messing with report cards, exams, board requirements, etc.

Big chunk of parents are not educated or live in poverty. Their kids will come to school and disrupt it for others but what can you do about it?

Separate them and put them into low cost classrooms? Yeah, that happens. Though it usually starts from 8th grade onwards. Until then, everyone is in the same classroom.

I think the biggest problem is we start investing in kids at a later age than we should. All their junior years, no one sets a good bar for them. They won't suddenly change as drastically as some people hope.

Re: The most prized degree in India became the most worthless

#155

Post by walshemj »

andrewflnr wrote: post #110
onetimeusename wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Something similar happened in the US where numbers of students in CS went up over time. However, academic fraud has not been as big of a problem as it is in India. An Indian friend of mine said that IIT is good but hardly anyone can get in and the caste system dictates admissions policies anyway so many people try to get engineering degrees from schools with lax standards. The professors are completely unqualified, a…

> ...and the caste system dictates admissions policies anyway Like, officially, in writing? Even if it's informal, as an American it blows my mind that that's still a thing.

Yes there are laws about disadvantaged Castes I believe and caste discrimination goes on amongst communities outside India.

Re: The most prized degree in India became the most worthless

#156

Post by CydeWeys »

triceratops wrote: post #135
kls wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I posted a comment a while back about this subject and the funny part was I got flamed by a bunch of US based technical workers, while the Indian techies pretty much agreed with me. Anyways the TLDR was I have a buddy Karthick and he is one of the best developers I know. So I asked him one day about why there was such low quality in India and he explained to me it was misaligned incentives due to the fact that, the f…

> He said it was a hold over from the cast system I was with you until the "cast (sic) system". > you are held in more esteem in India when you manage more people. You can replace "India" with literally any country in the world. Managers and bosses always are and always have been held in more esteem than leaf node workers, in every society past and present. It's got nothing to do with the caste system. Personal anecd…

> You can replace "India" with literally any country in the world. Managers and bosses always are and always have been held in more esteem than leaf node workers

This is true to a much greater or lesser degree depending on country, though. Here in the US you can be a really senior leaf node software engineer with fancy titles like "Staff" or "Senior Staff" or "Distinguished Fellow" and command tremendous respect and compensation.

That doesn't exist in some other countries. I was talking with an Italian friend once who works at a bank over there as a programmer, and seniority was exactly the same as how many people you manage. It was a contradiction in terms as far as he was concerned to be a senior software engineer if you weren't at least managing a team. The first question he asked when I was talking about my job was "How many people do you manage?", and when I responded zero, he immediately thought I was low level (I was not). Everyone aspires to be a manager over there.

My anecdote isn't exactly the opposite of yours, because in mine it's programmers themselves that are assigning status based on how many people you manage, whereas in your anecdote it's someone in an outgroup.

Re: The most prized degree in India became the most worthless

#157

Post by kumarm »

When I joined Engineering in India (1994), my state had 2000 engineering seats. 120K people wrote the entrance test for the 2K seats.

Today the same state has about 250K seats. Anyone who writes the entrance test can get into some college or other.

Has the quality gone down? I would think so. But I definitely think qualified students is definitely greater than 2k even when I went to college.

I would rather prefer over supply rather than shortage of educational opportunities any day.

Re: The most prized degree in India became the most worthless

#158

Post by walshemj »

yesenadam wrote: post #140
remmargorp64 wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wait... so in your mind there is a distinct difference between a developer, programmer, and engineer? Because in my mind, they are all the same. How are they different, in your mind?

I always thought calling programmers engineers was very weird until I watched this great talk: Real Software Engineering , Glenn Vanderburg, Lone Star Ruby 2010 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NP9AIUT9nos which explains what various kinds of engineers actually do. Not at all dry and boring like it might sound! From the YouTube blurb: Software engineering as it's taught in universities simply doesn't work. It doesn't…

Really I recall working for one on the big civil consultancies and we had one of our bridges fall of its supports once.

And lets not mention the new airport in Berlin (or the NYC tube lines) in the context of low cost.

Re: The most prized degree in India became the most worthless

#159

Post by duskwuff »

SmartestUnknown wrote: post #147

I am an Indian and I have seen so many worthless engineering colleges. The main issues, at least in my opinion, are "very very" bad teaching and very low incentives for someone to study well. I can't fathom how easy it is to pass a class in these engineering colleges and how widespread plagiarism is. When >50% points of the class is determined by a single exam that repeats same questions every year, it isn't hard to…

> The main issues, at least in my opinion, are "very very" bad teaching and very low incentives for someone to study well.

Another significant element I'd point to is outdated curricula. By way of example, many Indian CS course materials still require students to use Turbo C++ -- an IDE from the mid-1990s which runs under DOS. Needless to say, what ends up being taught is hardly representative of modern practices.

Re: The most prized degree in India became the most worthless

#160

Post by PAGAN_WIZARD »

mcguire wrote: post #138
C1sc0cat wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you think Computer Science is not "engineering" aka a scientist with thumbs.

As explained to me by an engineer: the distinct lack of statics, dynamics, and thermodynamics.

Then (most) electrical engineers are not engineers either.
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