In India, engineering students outsource their academic projects

You seem to be talking about outsourcing companies like TCS, Infosys etc.

In the technical field, cheating or faking it can only take you so far. Comparison should not really be with companies like TCS, Infosys, but with good companies who hire real talent and pay for that talent.

This, as far as I know is a direct result of proliferation of the number of engineering colleges in India. A good warning for companies to start recruiting only from top engineering colleges.

1. 20 - 30 projects a year = 1 yr. inexperienced programmer salary. 2. Fun - yes, Interesting - yes => if you can convince students to choose projects on whatever you want to work on. 3. Project making companies are dime a dozen. 4. Most welcome :)

PS - when I was a student I did 2-3 other projects for others...

AND students studying MS in USA and UK also send their assignments/homeworks back home - did those too ;)

First of all an undergrad in India is naive and needs good mentoring. That's missing and no one cares to solve this problem!

I think we have to blame the Indian education system largely for this. The root cause is - The quality of the system is poor and is broken. But it should only get better over-time and its happening.

Indian Schooling system is not ready to bring out Quality Engineers. It doesn't encourage Creative thinking and promote an intellectual environment.

There are many IT companies that fill this void by giving 6months intensive training because they know the education system.

Another social-cultural reason being - Indians are spoon feed-ed right from birth. They aren't independent much and depend on schooling more. This promotes a conservative mindset.

But this norm will gradually change for the better, I'm already seeing today's young undergrads getting involved in Startup space by asking internships and are doing some really great work!

In my startup, we have given internship projects to undergrads but we never value their paper degrees or schooling. We only value their github page, OSS work and appreciate self-taught programmers.

Yes, there is a lot of poor logic. Uni-dimensional education is a double edged sword. In either direction.

STEM has a certain utilitly, but for many its only useful for introductory jobs. Specialization is too great. And Like accounting, it is a limited skillset, especially for senior management positions. So, yes a technical degree will put you in a better 1sr year salary than an english major (or whatever) but its not going to make a career happen per-se.

Their is also dis-utility. There is a power curve thing. Unfortunately, STEM grades are more transparent and the use of curves is prevalent. Two things follow: not everyone is in the 10% (or top 10-20 schools). And there is a clear signal on who is not.

Both this guy and the english major now have to go to grad school or what not to prove something. Maybe they both do MBAs. But then you have an engineer with an MBA, and still this is arguably not great either. He's arguably at a dis-advantage in soft-skills (empathy, creativity), and his former advantage in quantitative elements vs the english major is less.

For some roles, this is fine. But There are plenty of smart people good at maths that make poor investment bankers, or poor economists, or poor product-dev guys. Just like the english major with the weak quant skills, but they are just missing the boat from another angle.

Alternatively, for grad school in STEM you are unlikely to gain entry in the lower half of your class. So again, for the lower performers this can limit options.

The only people that really have business dedicating their (entire) undergrad to science are: phd candidates, medicine, and applied engineers (like civil). And then those top or the top-top 10-20% of they best who are going to be able to leverage the full value of the degree. Go on to Ms, or otherwise put it to use in a deeper career trajectory, or go on to NASA or Google, etc.

What needs to happen with the rest, though, is intesting. The level of technical skills for basic competence is higher today than 30 years ago, so people need to be doing more 3+1 or 4+1 or 2+2 degrees, combining a technical qualification with a proper education in another area, such as liberal arts or something inter-disciplinary. Being one-dimensional is now a bit of a liability (in either direction).

The HN audience is not a great sample, as there are people here for whom total technical dedication indeed pays off (and makes sense). And/or who are bright enough to absorb knowledge in other areas independently. But one is best aware of what is the general and what is the exception. The odds are long otherwise.

This also happens in the Philippines. Sometimes the reason why students outsource projects isn't exactly related to how good they are academically. Some students(both good and bad) finish projects themselves and some outsource because they'd rather focus on a more important subject or project. Some even have part time jobs and really doesn't have the time. Even the really smart students sometimes outsource, these students have already been training and specializing on one field and if their project happens to be on a different field they'd rather have someone else do it than have bad marks. And about the project making companies, they're more like "teams" here in the Philippines. Mostly undergrads or graduates that haven't found jobs or programmers that have jobs but wants some extra-income.