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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

#171

Post by totalZero »

kumarm wrote: post #157

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 ove…

To play devil's advocate...

The value of an education comes as much from the group of peers (classmates who interact regarding experiences, plans, lessons, and ideas) as from the books and professors themselves. Like a critical mass of brains.

If you water the group down, then the most talented cohort benefits less than if they were the only people to advance.

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

#172

Post by filoleg »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #139
justwalt wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a similar story. I used to work with a guy from India, and he told me “If you ever meet an Indian in a position of power, they got there through nepotism and not by their own merit.” Hearing that was pretty shocking, not so much because it’s clearly untrue, but because he held that opinion of other Indian people. He did fall under the description you gave, though. He seemed to struggle with basic Arduino and R…

> Hearing that was pretty shocking, not so much because it’s clearly untrue, but because he held that opinion of other Indian people. Why would it be shocking for people to perceive nepotism in their own society?

From my personal observation, it seems to be because a lot of sheltered people who grew up in the US tend to assume that the US culture is the epitome of racism, divisiveness, and inequality that is unprecedented in the rest of the world.

So, in their minds, it is very shocking that a racial minority immigrant said something negative about their own culture. Especially since it sounds even worse than their over-exaggerated negative perception of the US.

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

#174

Post by chrononaut »

TedDoesntTalk wrote: post #153
andrewflnr wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ...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.

This is pretty harsh criticism. People perceive the world in the form that they experienced it through life. There's probably very few people in the world who are familiar with every culture and the nuances with it. You should encourage people to learn more, not attempt to make them feel ashamed that they didn't know it already.

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

#175

Post by nsenifty »

microtherion wrote: post #122
finnh wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be clear, that's affirmative action for people in the lowest castes (not everyone knows what SC etc mean offhand).

TIL that "SC" is the caste formerly known as "untouchables". It does not seem unreasonable to institute some affirmative action for them.

SC/ST were historically the most oppressed. However the OBC[1] designation is heavily diluted and is often handed out to previously well to do communities in exchange of votes.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Other_Backward_Class

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

#176

Post by fillskills »

totalZero wrote: post #171
kumarm wrote: post #157

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 ove…

To play devil's advocate... The value of an education comes as much from the group of peers (classmates who interact regarding experiences, plans, lessons, and ideas) as from the books and professors themselves. Like a critical mass of brains. If you water the group down, then the most talented cohort benefits less than if they were the only people to advance.

Looks like the parent is saying that the right answer is somewhere in between. When enough engineers can be educated without watering down the entire cohort

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

#177

Post by ethbro »

Gibbon1 wrote: post #113
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…

That's in line with what I perceive to be the waxing and waning of various degrees in the US. The farther the incentives drift away from selecting for people with sustainable interest and aptitude, more generally maladapted people in the field for the next five to ten years. I think it's often a self limiting thing because word gets around that there isn't enough brass rings for everyone.

The problem is formal scholarly training and employment demands are 4-8 years dislocated from each other.

Universities do their best to keep a bead on the market (at least, the good ones do), but without medical school-style coordination it's almost impossible not to under- or over-shoot substantially in terms of graduate supply.

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

#179

Post by ethbro »

205guy wrote: post #170
smdz wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is not the caste based discrimination like you might intuitively perceive. In history there was a caste system that led to systemic deprivation of education and opportunity to underprivileged castes. So India (few decades back) came up with a reservation system so that people belonging to those castes could get jobs/education/opportunities. In today's times it's scale is more like racism that you would find in mos…

Sounds like you're describing was what Americans call affirmative action ("a reservation system so that people belonging to those castes could get jobs/education/opportunities"). I am not knowledgeable about India's system, but I get the impression that like the one in the US, it is politically/culturally divisive and I would take any comment about it as opinion/preference rather than fact.

It's factual that a policy exists or does not, however one feels about it.

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

#180

Post by barry-cotter »

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.

No, it’s formal. Much as there are certain groups in the US that are held to lower standards in the US for purposes of admission to universities and some other opportunities so it is in India. There are reservations for Scheduled Castes and Backward Tribes. If you don’t come from them the grade you need to get into a good college will be higher, much as if you want to get into Harvard it’ll be harder if you’re Li or Nguyen than if you’re Jones or Ramirez.
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