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India Graduates Millions, But Too Few Are Fit to Hire

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Re: India Graduates Millions, But Too Few Are Fit to Hire

#21

Post by bdhe »

mquander wrote: post #11
bdhe wrote: post #7

An important, but tangential point to note is that unlike the US, college education in India does not allow for a student to independently chose his/her major. People join colleges already deciding (without taking a single course) what they plan to get a degree in. This leads to two things: 1. Most people do not have a clue about their interests and passion until it is too late (or never!). 2. The only majors that pe…

As someone who knows nothing about the Indian education system, can you clarify? Do Indian children have their major chosen for them via parents, tests, or administrators? Or do they decide on their own focus, but prior to college? I would also offer that the article isn't complaining that graduates are not passionate about their work; it's complaining that they appear to have taken very little away from their educat…

> Having less volition intuitively explains a lack of passion, but I'm not convinced that it does a great job explaining a lack of competence -- passion can be replaced by discipline and social pressure.

Yes, my point was that it would be of note for people discussing the Indian education system to keep in mind the way people go about choosing their subjects. I didn't say that it was the primary cause or even directly contributing to the lack of competence.

Re: India Graduates Millions, But Too Few Are Fit to Hire

#22

Post by adhipg »

mquander wrote: post #11
bdhe wrote: post #7

An important, but tangential point to note is that unlike the US, college education in India does not allow for a student to independently chose his/her major. People join colleges already deciding (without taking a single course) what they plan to get a degree in. This leads to two things: 1. Most people do not have a clue about their interests and passion until it is too late (or never!). 2. The only majors that pe…

As someone who knows nothing about the Indian education system, can you clarify? Do Indian children have their major chosen for them via parents, tests, or administrators? Or do they decide on their own focus, but prior to college? I would also offer that the article isn't complaining that graduates are not passionate about their work; it's complaining that they appear to have taken very little away from their educat…

As stated above, most colleges in India do not allow you to pick subjects and customize your course. Thus, all you chose is a 'major' (the degree) and the rest (the subjects and curriculum) has been chosen for you by the college.

Most of the times a student's major is selected for him/her with the following preference:

1. What's available in the most reputed college nearby. 2. What the parents perceive to be the best degree to pursue (usually engineers/doctors followed by other streams based on the general consensus of their friends/peers/relatives).

Children almost never decide their own focus - at least they never did say about ten years ago. Children here make the first choice of their courses to study in High School when they are 16. That's almost too young to decide what you want to be.

You can be certain that almost every Indian student who took Biology in their High School tried to be a doctor and every student who had Maths and Physics took the exams for entrance to Engineering colleges.

That's why we see Indian engineers have a very skewed quality to quantity ratio - many of them never wanted to be engineers in the first place!

This can mostly be attributed to our parents growing up in an (almost) socialist republic where doctors and engineers were the best career avenues after the government. However, things are changing slowly and parents are being very liberal with the career choices of their kids and getting them to explore different options.

Re: India Graduates Millions, But Too Few Are Fit to Hire

#23

Post by bdhe »

w1ntermute wrote: post #13
mquander wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who knows nothing about the Indian education system, can you clarify? Do Indian children have their major chosen for them via parents, tests, or administrators? Or do they decide on their own focus, but prior to college? I would also offer that the article isn't complaining that graduates are not passionate about their work; it's complaining that they appear to have taken very little away from their educat…

> Do Indian children have their major chosen for them via parents, tests, or administrators? Parents. Their future job is usually decided for them before they're even born. The number of people who go into a particular profession because they enjoy it is exceedingly small.

> Parents. Their future job is usually decided for them before they're even born.

This is patently untrue. Parents usually have high expectations of stable, well-earning jobs, but in no way decide before they are even born. It might apply to the minority of businessmen who insist that their children carry on the "family business", but even that is rare.

Re: India Graduates Millions, But Too Few Are Fit to Hire

#24

Post by kalendae »

mithaler wrote: post #12
galadriel wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can teachers be bribed in US to pass students ? (Just curious)

I imagine this can happen anywhere, US or otherwise.

Just because something can happen anywhere does not mean that they happen to the same degree. India has a corruption perception index of 3.3 (out of 10) in 2010. Below even countries like China and Columbia. The effect on education is just one ramification of corruption. It is overly dismissive to make the claim that 'well corruption happens everywhere'

Re: India Graduates Millions, But Too Few Are Fit to Hire

#26

Post by sid6376 »

mquander wrote: post #11
bdhe wrote: post #7

An important, but tangential point to note is that unlike the US, college education in India does not allow for a student to independently chose his/her major. People join colleges already deciding (without taking a single course) what they plan to get a degree in. This leads to two things: 1. Most people do not have a clue about their interests and passion until it is too late (or never!). 2. The only majors that pe…

As someone who knows nothing about the Indian education system, can you clarify? Do Indian children have their major chosen for them via parents, tests, or administrators? Or do they decide on their own focus, but prior to college? I would also offer that the article isn't complaining that graduates are not passionate about their work; it's complaining that they appear to have taken very little away from their educat…

Parents choose based on what they think is the safest option for their kids. To put the blame entirely on them will not be fair. One of the most interesting things I find about the American way of life is, people start taking up jobs from a very young age. IMO this helps them explore options and also discover their own interests and even aptitude for a particular line of work. Also in the Indian way of life hobbies always come second to academics.

Re: India Graduates Millions, But Too Few Are Fit to Hire

#27

Post by waterside81 »

dman wrote: post #17
galadriel wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can teachers be bribed in US to pass students ? (Just curious)

Its included in the tution! http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/breakingnews/court-battle-o... Note: Story is about Canada not the US. Frankly I think its rather hard to fail in a US university course.

Anecdotal evidence: My brother was doing a PhD at Yale and was a TA for a 1st year chemistry class. He was marking papers and gave a few of them an 'F' because they were terribly done. The professor told him to re-mark them because the school motto is "You don't fail at Yale"

Re: India Graduates Millions, But Too Few Are Fit to Hire

#28

Post by jerf »

galadriel wrote: post #10
dman wrote: post #2

That is probably true globally.

Can teachers be bribed in US to pass students ? (Just curious)

We do it differently. In a traditional bribery situation, one bribes the official to get a specific "exception" through. In the US, we declare that we aren't paying umpty-thousand dollars a year so that Johnny can get an F and that our contributions to the college will be going down if this continues, and in the spirit of American egalitarianism and fraternity, we lower the standards for everyone. Basically, we've collectively bargained the bribery rather than doing it on a per-student basis.

I'm not entirely clear myself on the exact breakdown of truth vs. sarcasm in the preceding paragraph.

Re: India Graduates Millions, But Too Few Are Fit to Hire

#29

Post by JonnieCache »

adhipg wrote: post #22
mquander wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who knows nothing about the Indian education system, can you clarify? Do Indian children have their major chosen for them via parents, tests, or administrators? Or do they decide on their own focus, but prior to college? I would also offer that the article isn't complaining that graduates are not passionate about their work; it's complaining that they appear to have taken very little away from their educat…

As stated above, most colleges in India do not allow you to pick subjects and customize your course. Thus, all you chose is a 'major' (the degree) and the rest (the subjects and curriculum) has been chosen for you by the college. Most of the times a student's major is selected for him/her with the following preference: 1. What's available in the most reputed college nearby. 2. What the parents perceive to be the best…

>As stated above, most colleges in India do not allow you to pick subjects and customize your course. Thus, all you chose is a 'major' (the degree) and the rest (the subjects and curriculum) has been chosen for you by the college.

>Children here make the first choice of their courses to study in High School when they are 16. That's almost too young to decide what you want to be.

This is exactly the same as in britain. India inherited most of it's bureaucracy from britain.

Re: India Graduates Millions, But Too Few Are Fit to Hire

#30

Post by magic_haze »

As an Indian student who tried to get through the "system", I can relate to this. I was really into computers and programming in high school, so I decided to go into the engineering stream in the "+2" years (basically, 11th and 12th grades, as opposed to the biology stream, which supposedly preps you for medical school). I remember the parental and peer pressure particularly well: my dad was pretty much opposed to it because he felt taking biology would "lead to more options later", but I was not convinced. Most of my friends suffered through the biology classes, and yet ended up in engineering degrees at college (and for the most part, are working at either Infosys or Wipro now. No one is doing anything even remotely related to medicine.)

The last few years of high school was basically hell for me: the government subsidies OP's article mentions are limited just for the biggies (IITs and RECs), and the chances of getting into them are very slim. You have to get through series of examinations that over the years have gotten very _very_ tough: they basically expect you to know things in Physics, Chemistry and Math that - atleast in the US - are not taught till the third year of college. Forget about high school - I went to IIT coaching centers, and was very miserable because I had no real interest in any of the subjects - I wanted to learn CS, dammit - why was I mugging up organic chem formulae?

Its not even worth it to consider joining other colleges. Job options are limited, but the worst part is they all require huge "donations" upfront for a laughable experience (both in terms of the teaching talent and curriculum).

Long story short, I didn't end up getting a sufficiently high ranking in the entrance exams (my choices in the placement, if I remember right, were either metallurgy in IIT or mechanical engineering in REC: the top 400 had basically grabbed up all the CS degrees. Remember: over 400,000 students write the exam every year, so almost everyone ends up in a field they're not interested in.) so I decided to take a huge student loan and come study in the US. I don't regret the decision: I'm now doing what I love, and have gotten _so_ much more exposure than my peers back home it's not even funny.

When I went back to India to do an internship (and enjoy the vacation) a couple of years back, I was appalled by how little enthusiasm most people have about the work they'd end up doing.

Horrible stuff.

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