Problems like this are vexing, even to us non-Indians in the US. I've had the privilege of working with some awesome engineers from around the world, but issues of this ilk taint the opinions of many folks in IT and CS. It's bad enough that these assumptions hurt the careers of truly talented and dedicated engineers and programmers.
In India, engineering students outsource their academic projects
71–80 of 85 posts
Re: In India, engineering students outsource their academic projects
#72There are some structural problems that contribute to (but don't cause) this phenomenon. By most university rules an engineering student needs to do an 'external project' with a company or research lab to complete his degree. Technically you can do a project of your own but most professors of engineering in India are clueless about real world engineering projects and don't do any research or have projects of their ow…
>>How is a 19 year old supposed to get a non existent company to give them an internship on a sharply defined project? Actually answer to this question lies in understanding a simple thing. Most of us really study to just get a job. That is the fact. Most people get into software after hearing stories from the 90's. How some some uncle of theirs, or somebody from their far relatives, or neighbors or someone from thei…
This could be, I suspect, both a blessing and a curse for companies like Coursera and Udacity.
On the one hand, many of the people participating today are probably highly motivated and doing it out of a desire to learn new things and solve problems. They may not have access to formal education, for whatever reason, but are determined to become more educated anyway.
On the other hand, some of the participants probably don't care at all about learning anything and just want a credential that will stand up to scrutiny. The goal for this group is to get a job, not necessarily to become qualified for a job (subtle difference).
Unfortunately, as the "value" of the education offered by online companies (i.e. recognition by employers) increases, the share of people in the second category will almost certainly rise quickly.
Ideally, the market will discount this form of education appropriately (as it theoretically does with all other forms of education). The "value" of a Coursera certificate, for instance, would be constrained by the risk of accidentally hiring a person from the second category above, who may have graduated, but failed to learn any useful skills.
However, the business model for these companies seems to be based on providing education to a massive number of people. If the market heavily discounts the education they provide, the business model might become impractical.
It seems to me that the biggest concern for Coursera and similar should be finding ways to enforce academic integrity standards to make sure that even the students in the second category actually end up learning something.
While this will, perhaps, result in fewer students initially, it will also keep the market from heavily discounting graduates of online programs, thus destroying the market for their services in the longer-run.
Re: In India, engineering students outsource their academic projects
#73There are some structural problems that contribute to (but don't cause) this phenomenon. By most university rules an engineering student needs to do an 'external project' with a company or research lab to complete his degree. Technically you can do a project of your own but most professors of engineering in India are clueless about real world engineering projects and don't do any research or have projects of their ow…
This is off topic but:
I was bored to tears and rarely attended class and
spent all my time chasing girls
Is your experience unusual? I know that in a lot of conservative societies (like some of the Arab countries, particularly in the Gulf) men & women are not supposed to have relationships before marriage.
Re: In India, engineering students outsource their academic projects
#74Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sadly, I can relate. I'm in my final year in a (not so great) College in Delhi, and all everyone talks about is Infosys/TCS. Summer internships were a joke. I'm pretty sure that me and a friend were the only ones who tried to get a genuine internship (and were interviews). For the rest of the class, it was Java/.NET certification courses galore. I've been lucky that I found a startup with a bunch of really smart guys…
Want a real kick ass technical summer internship go for smaller companies.
Are internships in India generally unpayed?
Re: In India, engineering students outsource their academic projects
#75Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
> A good warning for companies to start recruiting only from top engineering colleges. I belong to a college which was opened just because my chairman had a lot of money, heavens know if it was back or white. It was started the year I had to secure admission to some random foo college as I had completed class 12. When you dont expect a 19 year old to make a minor project choice. How can you expect a 16 year old to ma…
True. A lot of good companies recruiting from big name colleges (IITs, NITs etc.) are wasting their time. The people from those colleges more or less end up studying for CAT and leave to study for an MBA degree within an year. Increasingly the startup founders and rockstar engineers come from the non-IIT-NIT colleges.
Re: In India, engineering students outsource their academic projects
#76There are some structural problems that contribute to (but don't cause) this phenomenon. By most university rules an engineering student needs to do an 'external project' with a company or research lab to complete his degree. Technically you can do a project of your own but most professors of engineering in India are clueless about real world engineering projects and don't do any research or have projects of their ow…
This is off topic but: I was bored to tears and rarely attended class and spent all my time chasing girls I was told by an Indian ex-roommate that most people in India are married according to arranged marriages that their parents setup and that there isn't much dating or contact with the opposite sex involved beforehand. Is your experience unusual? I know that in a lot of conservative societies (like some of the Ara…
"Is your experience unusual?"
naah all my friends were chasing girls. And the girls had their own agendas I assume. Lots of sex happened then (and happens today), though there were a few people who 'went without'. But even then I assure you that was due to being unable to score, not by choice.
Arranged marriages do happen, even today. That has nothing to do with what happens when you are not married. Traditionally there was a lot of emphasis on women's virginity, as in many patriarchical societies so it was a rewarding strategy (in the game theory sense) for women to pretend that they were/are 'pure' before marriage. With the onset of modernization and urbanization, this is all honored in the breach, in the cities at least.
"I know that in a lot of conservative societies (like some of the Arab countries, particularly in the Gulf) men & women are not supposed to have relationships before marriage"
'supposed to' being the operative word, even in Islamic countries. Teenagers are horny everywhere in the world, and the rest is just negotiation and risk taking ;)
Re: In India, engineering students outsource their academic projects
#77Just to balance out all the negative commentary about Indian education (which I'm not discounting by any means), I would like to offer my experience as a college student in one of India's premier engineering colleges (hint, y'all know it's name).
I was a chemistry student in a mostly technical (engineering) college. Nobody in this college would dream of the kinds of blatant cheating I hear about at other places. Yes, people helping each other in their projects... imbalanced project teams with one brilliant student putting in most of the effort etc, that level of dubious behaviour was not uncommon (but not _too_ common either).
I got to play around with computers as my final year project. It was computational chemistry. I built a simulation model of a large number of molecules floating around under each other's forces and watch their emergent behaviour over simulated time. I'm rather proud of that project to this day.
And I was not alone by any means. A few of my batchmates' project work ended up in published papers (yes, our professors were expected to carry out international level research along with teaching). I interacted a bit with the computer science people too (since I was working on high performance compute clusters etc.). Some of the software I saw them build was impressive but I didn't know _how_ impressive at that stage in my life.
Later I switched fields and ended up doing a masters in computer science in a US university (picked up the under-graduate material through self-study and audited classes over a few years of pretending to do science research and TA'ing :-) )
Then I realized that the computer science students I came across back in my Indian college were doing some very impressive work for undergraduates.
So there. I hope it provides a reasonable counter-point to all the negative stuff about Indian students/colleges. My school is definitely not the common case... but it and many others like it do exist. (I'm posting from a throw-away account for reasons best left unstated.)
Re: In India, engineering students outsource their academic projects
#78Earlier quoted context omitted.
> A good warning for companies to start recruiting only from top engineering colleges. I belong to a college which was opened just because my chairman had a lot of money, heavens know if it was back or white. It was started the year I had to secure admission to some random foo college as I had completed class 12. When you dont expect a 19 year old to make a minor project choice. How can you expect a 16 year old to ma…
True. A lot of good companies recruiting from big name colleges (IITs, NITs etc.) are wasting their time. The people from those colleges more or less end up studying for CAT and leave to study for an MBA degree within an year. Increasingly the startup founders and rockstar engineers come from the non-IIT-NIT colleges.
A lot of students fall under the category of students which cannot even explain the final year project which they did.
Most Master's degree holders from other Indian universities cannot even solve FizzBuzz in a language of their choice. http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2007/02/why-cant-programmer...
Re: In India, engineering students outsource their academic projects
#79Re: In India, engineering students outsource their academic projects
#80Earlier quoted context omitted.
Same as you, when I told my professors about me attending Pycon India Conference(this happened a week before); they were clueless. I had to explain everyone one of them what is python. And when they got to know that I won't be getting any certification from this conference, they even suggested me to leave it and do some course in Java or .Net from local training institute.
Sadly, I can relate. I'm in my final year in a (not so great) College in Delhi, and all everyone talks about is Infosys/TCS. Summer internships were a joke. I'm pretty sure that me and a friend were the only ones who tried to get a genuine internship (and were interviews). For the rest of the class, it was Java/.NET certification courses galore. I've been lucky that I found a startup with a bunch of really smart guys…
>For the rest of the class, it was Java/.NET certification courses galore.
I wonder why they even bother. And don't forget "In-plant training".