India Graduates Millions, But Too Few Are Fit to Hire

Here is what is wrong after having been taught in a decent engineering college in India.

1) One studies hard trying to get into a decent engineering college. If they are even wee bit good, they get into a decent college.

Sidenote: For anyone who says they did not get into a good college and are doing great in life now (at least intellectually), here is what happened.

You were not so great or smart when you gave that exam. You got to learn through self learning, fear of not being able to do great stuff in life and a lot of experience or got away to US in a decent college because your family could afford it.

2)Once they get into the college, the freedom, the fun, the energy, the beer, the drugs often bring the worse out of them. If none of the above they probably trade lectures for Counter Strike sessions (I mean 6-7 hours of continuous sessions everyday) or Poker or some new shit.

The sad part is these people are still doing the right thing since the guy taking the class most probably knows nothing about the subject too and if they do are either bad teachers or too obnoxious to be able to impart knowledge to a mind that is vulnerable to wandering off to butterflies or scribbles at the back of notebook or tweeting (the hot new stuff).

3) So even if you were the CS guy in school, the agony of being taught by people who were not the best people for the job leaves one disappointed. Something as cool as programming no longer is exciting because you have to do exactly what is expected of you. [Anecdotal evidence: I actually was never much of a programmer. I kept passing every exam by just writing logic and pseudocodes. I did write a simple factorial using something other than recursion and the lab in charge got the better out of me. Then on I left bothering myself, so by the time we were being taught data structures, I had lost my ground.]

The people who are the toppers in a class are those who attend every lecture (does not matter what they get out of it) and show utter respect for the profs. 100% attendance and you are bound to get a decent score in the end sems. That is when studying loses its charm.

4) At the end of college getting a good job means getting into a consultancy. Many smarter companies just do not allow Non CS people to sit for programming jobs even when they prove to be great. [ Anecdotal Evidence: A friend of a friend from a non CS degree got into Facebook US, before being not allowed to sit by Google India and MS India]

So call it lack of opportunities, self belief, hard work of students, peer pressure, you end up being just a graduate. Not an engineer in any sense of word.

If the quality matches, that's a great deal. I life in North Africa. But do you have any idea (which university, how to apply, requirements...)

In the US, the result of failure is bankruptcy and burning through your savings, followed by an upper middle class career track. Worst case, you are earning the pay of a 35 year old when you are 40 and your 401k is smaller.

In India, the downside is unbounded. Peru looks wealthy by comparison. 46% of the urban population doesn't have access to improved sanitation. I know a doctor in India who can't afford a water supply with one nine of uptime.

Under the same circumstances, I'm sure you'd also discourage your daughter from marrying an entrepreneur.

Granted, you probably wouldn't be locking her away from the outside world, discouraging her from getting educated (makes her less marriageworthy and harder to control), or selecting her husband for her. But that's a separate issue.

India has no welfare structure, zilch, zero, nada. More than half of population has no sanitation, lot of children are seriously suffering from malnutrition; and good schools are available to few.

If you are an entrepreneur in India, most probably you were lucky enough to be born in 20% of 'richer' family of India, and more often than not, a failure might put you back with the rest 80%. That is too much to bet, especially in a place where start-up in Silicon valley sense is quite difficult to setup.

People are educated in India. That doesn;t mean they have to speak English or be able to read English books. English is not the native language for many school and college going people and their education have been through vernacular medium schools. Its how sharp they are that matters. Teach them English properly and they will be able to grasp that too! This articles tries to judge students based on "So few of the high school and college graduates who come through the door can communicate effectively in English, and so many lack a grasp of educational basics such as reading comprehension, that the company can hire just three out of every 100 applicants." which is ridiculous!!