In India, engineering students outsource their academic projects • Hacker News Board

Re: In India, engineering students outsource their academic projects

#21

Post by registeraux » Thu, Oct 04, 2012, 5:42 AM UTC

kamaal wrote: post #15

abc_lisper wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lol. I think he is frustrated. First you get frustrated, then you accept it, and then you laugh at people who are frustrated .. LOLOL.. Just kidding. Kamaal, Do you get frustrated because you don't think you are paid as much as you should be? Or, that the business people shouldn't be paid as much as the technical guys? If it is the latter, there is no respite, and you should probably do what others do. First of all,…

>>Or, that the business people shouldn't be paid as much as the technical guys? The other way. Technical guys must be paid what they deserve. I don't know why you think I'm frustrated. And if you feel things are good as they are in India, then I rest my case. I have no intentions of immigrating to US. Especially when there is so much growth in India and I have so much to benefit from, besides I don't feel coming to U…

I still can't understand what are you trying to make us all believe with this article and your comments? That you are a saint because you didn't go the USA and everyone else who went there is a cheat?

Re: In India, engineering students outsource their academic projects

#22

Post by gingerjoos » Thu, Oct 04, 2012, 5:42 AM UTC

The sorry state of education is a distraction, the real problem is something else. Most students in India are not given much of a choice when it comes to choosing their career path. Most of the students are forced to be doctors, engineers or civil servants. Very few end up being artists, singers, sports-person... anything which is not a "real" job.

The result being that a host of colleges have sprung up to meet this demand. These colleges are setup with the sole aim of making money. Education is just a side effect. Students get no academic freedom and have no space to learn outside of a very narrowly defined "syllabus".

The worse problem is that most students who end up in Engineering Colleges have absolutely no interest in becoming engineers. They do manage to somehow graduate and get an "IT job". They end up being mediocre engineers and at the earliest opportunity try to find a way out. These poor souls end up giving a bad name to Indian Engineers.

What about those who want to be engineers because they like to build things and love to tinker around? The hacker types? Getting into an engineering college requires a lot of money. If and when they do get into an engineering college it's a poor quality one. They are forced to spend time only on mugging up equations and theorems. They get no space to build circuits of their own or blow up stuff for the heck of it. Assignments are a joke, they require no application of thought and all that's required is merely copying stuff from the text book onto paper. The poor dispirted hackers end up languishing in low paying jobs or find an escape route by moving out of the country where their talents are recognised.

tl;dr : Quality suffers when quantity increases beyond limit.

Re: In India, engineering students outsource their academic projects

#23

Post by cmadan » Thu, Oct 04, 2012, 5:42 AM UTC

Fortunately, for these group of students the benefit is short lived and mainly on paper. They have better grades compared to their honest peers because of the complicity from professors (it is trivial to figure out whether someone has done the project or outsourced it, but they don't care).

But when it comes around to getting a job, they are the ones who usually struggle. I've seen so many students with average grades ultimately be recruited for the best jobs available on the market because they preferred to spend their time on TopCoder instead of gaming the system.

In some ways, I feel sorry for them. Most of them do it due to the herd mentality, everyone is outsourcing their projects so they must outsource their projects too. Clearly, this doesn't work out very in the long term and what they gain by taking the easy way out, they lose in terms of denying themselves the opportunity to gain some practical experience.

Re: In India, engineering students outsource their academic projects

#24

Post by kamaal » Thu, Oct 04, 2012, 5:44 AM UTC

gl0b wrote: post #13

kamaal wrote: post #3

Actually I posted this article not because I wanted to point out how bad Indian students are. Not all Indian students do this. And the Indian market is a usual mix of people of various kinds- Awesome, good, bad, horrible and even clueless people like this. What I wanted to point out was how things work out in the real world. The thumb rule for describing these sort of things in India is the saying 'No good deed goes…

Though it's common, if a students wants to learn he generally won't do it. I passed my engineering from one of the not so known college in India and this is pretty common there. I know a guy who was quite dedicated with his project and though he didn't get good marks ( project )or awesome campus placement, he got into AMD later as a new grad. ( w.r.t placement ). Our team did some work on compiler ( source to source…

>>I know a guy who was quite dedicated with his project and though he didn't get good marks

Exactly my point. I am happy that he got what he deserved. But you can imagine this is not likely to work at scale.

There are many places where you won't even be shortlisted for the interview if you don't have good marks.

Re: In India, engineering students outsource their academic projects

#25

Post by sown » Thu, Oct 04, 2012, 5:44 AM UTC

gingerjoos wrote: post #22

The sorry state of education is a distraction, the real problem is something else. Most students in India are not given much of a choice when it comes to choosing their career path. Most of the students are forced to be doctors, engineers or civil servants. Very few end up being artists, singers, sports-person... anything which is not a "real" job. The result being that a host of colleges have sprung up to meet this…

It sounds like education could be even more disrupted there than here?

Re: In India, engineering students outsource their academic projects

#26

Post by kamaal » Thu, Oct 04, 2012, 5:46 AM UTC

gingerjoos wrote: post #22

The sorry state of education is a distraction, the real problem is something else. Most students in India are not given much of a choice when it comes to choosing their career path. Most of the students are forced to be doctors, engineers or civil servants. Very few end up being artists, singers, sports-person... anything which is not a "real" job. The result being that a host of colleges have sprung up to meet this…

Actually a friend of mine joking said- In India, we call our least of area of incompetence as our passion. Which actually happens to be very true.

Re: In India, engineering students outsource their academic projects

#27

Post by trhtrsh » Thu, Oct 04, 2012, 5:48 AM UTC

1. How much does "project making" pay compared to other available software jobs?

2. Are those projects more fun than other jobs?

3. Subvert the whole system: Create a project-making company. Keep good records. Refer your employees to employers, on the basis of their solid project portfolios. Basically, project-making companies thus displace the universities as the place where real learning happens and is proven.

4. Thank you to all the Indians posting here today. I feel like I am reading hackernews.in, and it's nice to get a vacation from Silicon Valley :-)

Re: In India, engineering students outsource their academic projects

#28

Post by kamaal » Thu, Oct 04, 2012, 5:51 AM UTC

registeraux wrote: post #21

kamaal wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>Or, that the business people shouldn't be paid as much as the technical guys? The other way. Technical guys must be paid what they deserve. I don't know why you think I'm frustrated. And if you feel things are good as they are in India, then I rest my case. I have no intentions of immigrating to US. Especially when there is so much growth in India and I have so much to benefit from, besides I don't feel coming to U…

I still can't understand what are you trying to make us all believe with this article and your comments? That you are a saint because you didn't go the USA and everyone else who went there is a cheat?

When did I say that? I am pointing to a section of people who I felt perform that way. And I never said 'YOU' did that.

I don't know if you immigrated to the US. But if you did, I know you have your own reasons. If you are happy about it, stand by it. Other wise why should you have any issues at all?

Re: In India, engineering students outsource their academic projects

#29

Post by swatkat » Thu, Oct 04, 2012, 5:54 AM UTC

damian2000 wrote: post #17

capex wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The situation in Australia is hardly any different. http://www.smh.com.au/technology/technology-news/uni-cheats-...

No doubt - there's cheats everywhere... but I don't think its near the scale of India.

@damian2000, [citation needed]

Re: In India, engineering students outsource their academic projects

#30

Post by kamaal » Thu, Oct 04, 2012, 5:54 AM UTC

cmadan wrote: post #23

Fortunately, for these group of students the benefit is short lived and mainly on paper. They have better grades compared to their honest peers because of the complicity from professors (it is trivial to figure out whether someone has done the project or outsourced it, but they don't care). But when it comes around to getting a job, they are the ones who usually struggle. I've seen so many students with average grade…

>>Fortunately, for these group of students the benefit is short lived and mainly on paper.

Sorry these are precisely the kind of guys who end up being mid level managers in large corporates.

>>But when it comes around to getting a job, they are the ones who usually struggle.

Interview in India are a joke. Body shops pick up people for marks, and familiarity with objective questions roaming around on the internet.