Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

India Graduates Millions, But Too Few Are Fit to Hire

online.wsj.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 154 posts

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

#91

Post by ideamonk »

contravert wrote: post #80
rorrr wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My impression (and I might be very wrong) is that both Indian and Chinese education is concentrated on memorization rather than understanding. That's why so few people from both countries can solve problems (at least in my work experience). I've interviewed a lot of people in the last 2 years, and I never look at the education level. I only care about your ability to solve problems. We've had people with masters in C…

The ACM ICPC suggests that Asian universities do quite well at programming: http://cm.baylor.edu/ICPCFinalResults2010 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ACM_International_Collegiate_Pr...

You mean, Chinese do great ?

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

#92

Post by hariis »

The problem seems to be poor communication in English and lack of a grasp of educational basics such as reading comprehension. These are problems to be addressed at the high school level.

I attribute these squarely to the teaching methodology which is mostly memorization with no encouragement to creativity whatsoever. On top of this, the teachers in most schools are utterly incompetent and hence lack enthusiasm.

One solution may be to start private institutions that teach or increase the proficiency in such language skills (like how NIIT and Aptech did to computer education when schools couldn't do it).

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

#93

Post by shreyas88 »

magic_haze wrote: post #30

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…

Being an Indian and a former student myself, I can't relate enough to OP's article or to your comment. I took up biology in +2, because my mom insisted it would "lead to more options later" even though I wanted to take up Computer Science (Yes my +2 college had that as an option). But I didn't get to. And I regret that decision even now.

I ended up studying something I didn't like in Engineering and didn't get good grades. I failed in a few exams. As shown in the movie 3 idiots, I did get selected in 2 companies after Engineering, but due to those failed exams, they ended up not giving me an offer letter even though I had got selected among a group of 3000(me and 12 others had gotten selected.) And my classmates who memorized everything in the textbooks got a high salaried job. I mean these people would never even know how to solve the maths problems which weren't in the textbooks.

Anyway all this has left a very sour taste in my mouth regarding all things Indian. In the next few months, I'm going to the US to pursue a Computer Science Master's like I always wanted, but I do realize that this puts me at a disadvantage over people who did study Computer Science at the Bachelor's level. But I hope I can do well

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

#94

Post by yummyfajitas »

csomar wrote: post #81
yummyfajitas wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Economics also plays a big role. Most of us outside India just don't get this. In India, your choices are the following: a) Be a (relatively, not absolutely) rich doctor or engineer in the top 2.5% [1] of India (in terms of income). b) Be poorer than the bottom 2.5% of Americans. Very likely, be poor even by the standards of Brazil or Mexico. I'd work a job I hate to avoid that. I'd encourage my kids to do the same.…

But this won't solve the problem, does it? This will actually make it worse and lead to unhappy/tired generations. I'll actually sensibles people and push them to make a revolution.

The situation sucks, but only economic growth will solve the problem. The fundamental problem is scarcity - not enough wealth to go around.

A revolution against economic reality will not create wealth.

(Granted, a revolution against corrupt government workers demanding bribes might. If that's the revolution you want to start, I'll lend my pitchfork.)

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

#95

Post by redthrowaway »

rit wrote: post #39
ajpatel wrote: post #4

Full article: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405274870351550457614...

Thank you. These paywalls are insanity inducing.

My way around them is to simply search for the article on Google News, but the redirect seems to be a smarter option.

In fact, a Chrome extension to simply append the redirect to the URLs of any site it works on sounds interesting...

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

#96

Post by RickHull »

ryanc wrote: post #45
Eliezer wrote: post #5

3 out of 100 applicants is not surprising. http://lesswrong.com/lw/gy/you_are_not_hiring_the_top_1/

I wish you linked to Joel Spolsky's article rather than blogspam. Article: http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2005/01/27.html

Blogspam, really? That term implies lack of attribution and little or no value-add, neither of which is the case in the lesswrong.com post.

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

#97

Post by jerf »

Tycho wrote: post #82
jerf wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 co…

Maybe you should stop trying to be sarcastic, then? Please don't take that the wrong way, I've got nothing against you personally (I've read some good posts from you, IIRC), or even with that particular post - it's just the straw that broke the camel's back. I just read a large thread on programmers.stackexchange asking whether IT job requirements are customarily exxagerated, and the answers were distressing. Firstly…

Unfortunately, I do seriously think the truth percentage is quite significant or I actually wouldn't have posted it. Grade inflation at lower levels of education have different forces in play, but at the higher end it is my serious opinion that it is mostly the colleges/universities giving the customers what they want. Calling it bribery is a bit sarcastic, but even ten years ago I could see professors on low-level classes struggling against grading fairly vs. the knowledge that if they did they would actually be overruled by higher levels of the organization over concerns about monetary implications. (On the positive, I did see one mass-flunking for cheating on a computer science 101 course, though, and it stood.)

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

#98

Post by adamzochowski »

francoisdevlin wrote: post #84
jarek wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If switching from EE to CS is very easy, one or both are being taught wrong.

Remind me where CS came from again?

This is the old debate of whether CS should stand for Computer Science ( chips / signals / digital electronics ) or Computing Science ( algorithms / language design ).

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

#99

Post by baltcode »

yummyfajitas wrote: post #94
csomar wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But this won't solve the problem, does it? This will actually make it worse and lead to unhappy/tired generations. I'll actually sensibles people and push them to make a revolution.

The situation sucks, but only economic growth will solve the problem. The fundamental problem is scarcity - not enough wealth to go around. A revolution against economic reality will not create wealth. (Granted, a revolution against corrupt government workers demanding bribes might. If that's the revolution you want to start, I'll lend my pitchfork.)

Thank you! Some "real" problems have to be solved before one can blame amorphous entities like "learning problem solving", passion, culture, etc.
Post reply on HN