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Students are the victims and culprits of India’s broken higher education system

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Re: Students are the victims and culprits of India’s broken higher education system

#31

Post by catchmrbharath »

anoncow wrote: post #27
lake99 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll clarify. I'll make no comments about medicine - I know nothing about education in this field. The bachelors programs in the IITs are great, by global standards. IISc does some cool work too. Leaving those aside, a BS in engineering (called BE or BTech here) is not bad. We have some outdated courses, we don't have the freedom to choose courses, etc. But for most of our courses, we use the same textbooks as Americ…

I will put in a word about medicine. Government run medical colleges are good because they have a lot of patients. Private medical colleges for the most part are in the business of selling seats to the highest bidder. Recently, the central govt proposed a single nationwide entrance test to curb the seat selling. Private colleges filed a case against it and won.(search for NEET exams)

I seriously cannot understand something like admission to medicine being decided by how much one pays. This leads to a lot of doctors who don't know a thing about medicine.

My cousin's son had a protruding spinal cord from the back, and the doctor had not noticed that after doing more than 10 ultrasonography. The doctor was just that ignorant, thanks to which the son was born with both his limbs paralyzed. The doctors who delivered the baby after a huge operation did not believe how a doctor can miss that.

So go to any small town, and you have really lousy doctors, thanks to our education system.

Re: Students are the victims and culprits of India’s broken higher education system

#32

Post by 3apo »

I feel the comparison to American Educational system is rather unfair, the American Higher Education being much more evolved and the best there is. IMHO Indian Education system would compare favorably to many other countries with the same socio-economic factors. This is not to say the system does not need to improve, but so does the Education system everywhere else (more of the sort of MOOCs/Khan Academy for instance; college fees have been increasing sharply in India).

In my personal opinion historically the Colleges in India were more occupied by handing out more degrees and not education. To go beyond the routine was always due to self initiatives of the select few and not the majority. If the colleges increased the standards higher than the usual then a majority of students would fail ( "out of syllabus" was a regular complaint if the exams were too hard). This is not a critique of the Educational system, rather I feel glad that my Indian college education was easy enough to let me pursue avenues which benefited me more than what was taught in classroom. A degree from a reputed Indian college is only to open doors, what you learn depends entirely on how motivated you are.

Re: Students are the victims and culprits of India’s broken higher education system

#34

Post by manojlds »

furyg3 wrote: post #5
shared4you wrote: post #4

> reservation system for the admission of scheduled castes and others residing at the bottom of India's socioeconomic pyramid Correction: it's social pyramid only. Classification of SC/STs is purely based on caste alone, not on economic status -- and we must fight to make it economic -only pyramid.

As an outsider, I would certainly agree with your comment. Caste quotas seem like they would only strengthen the system... Still, how synonymous is caste with economic status? I would guess "very" but your post makes it seem like there are some interesting nuances. What are India's caste demographics, anyway?

Cast system was based on work and hence mapped to the economic status. It is not the case anymore. Actually, it has led to reverse discrimination where those who are supposedly forward caste struggle to get into colleges and elsewhere. The reservation is one of the main reasons people leave India, and remain away.

Re: Students are the victims and culprits of India’s broken higher education system

#35

Post by saraid216 »

lake99 wrote: post #22
manish_gill wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I suppose we have similar kinds of lab sessions too. No! Not by far. The "lab sessions" in a typical non-IIT Indian engineering institutes are a joke. Ever heard of the Borland Turbo C compiler? Yeah, that's still used to teach students C/C++, with outdated (and non-standard) code. I've had similarly horrible experience in any and all labs, be it circuits and systems, networking, or whatever else you might think of…

This is a random sample. How different was your lab session compared to http://engr.case.edu/merat_francis/eecs245/EECS%20245%20Syll... ?

> This is a random sample.

Some pedantry: It was an anecdote. A random sample is multiple data points drawn randomly from a population. GP only provided one, and you suspected it might be an outlier.

Re: Students are the victims and culprits of India’s broken higher education system

#36

Post by saraid216 »

shared4you wrote: post #4

> reservation system for the admission of scheduled castes and others residing at the bottom of India's socioeconomic pyramid Correction: it's social pyramid only. Classification of SC/STs is purely based on caste alone, not on economic status -- and we must fight to make it economic -only pyramid.

Why would an "economic-only pyramid" be a better thing? It's not obvious to me that this is an easier goal than not having a pyramid at all.

Re: Students are the victims and culprits of India’s broken higher education system

#37

Post by dkarl »

ilamont wrote: post #12

I had a history professor who attended Berkeley in the 60s. He recalled the instructional methods used by one of his own professors at Berkeley: He simply got up to the podium, opened a textbook, and started reading. There was no discussion or chances to ask questions. As I recall, he indicated that this was a method of lecturing that had its roots in European academia. A question for HNers from India: With such a lo…

It's interesting how fifty years is the difference between world leadership and backwardness. Do you know if the change in teaching style at Berkeley had anything to do with the Free Speech Movement student protests in the 1960s? The author of the original post says that a latent penchant for popular protest is Indian students' best asset, so that's a tantalizing connection.

Re: Students are the victims and culprits of India’s broken higher education system

#38

Post by saraid216 »

jseliger wrote: post #18
squozzer wrote: post #17

All I can say is "good luck, you'll need it." I don't think India has a unique problem with its' higher ed system. Consider that the modern university is based on ideas developed in the late Middle Ages, throw in a healthy dash of politics (both formal and informal), and the gatekeeper factor, why would any university feel the need to change? Do today's kids have the gumption to boycott the system? We didn't - instea…

Consider that the modern university is based on ideas developed in the late Middle Ages, throw in a healthy dash of politics (both formal and informal), and the gatekeeper factor, why would any university feel the need to change? To be fair, the idea of the university got started in the Middle Ages but they have changed quite a bit since; if you're interested in the subject, take a look at the latest edition of Clark…

Ooooh, I have been looking for precisely a book on that topic. Thanks!

Re: Students are the victims and culprits of India’s broken higher education system

#39

Post by bjoe_lewis »

>To pause for a moment, here is the problem with me talking about this topic: right now many Indians reading this are starting to feel defensive.

No, we are not. We both know it is broken. You definitely should've taken a glimpse into Engineering Education and you would have died, except if it's not the IITs.

Re: Students are the victims and culprits of India’s broken higher education system

#40

Post by microarchitect »

ilamont wrote: post #12

I had a history professor who attended Berkeley in the 60s. He recalled the instructional methods used by one of his own professors at Berkeley: He simply got up to the podium, opened a textbook, and started reading. There was no discussion or chances to ask questions. As I recall, he indicated that this was a method of lecturing that had its roots in European academia. A question for HNers from India: With such a lo…

transferred back to Indian universities by returnees who start academic careers?

Of course, they are. I went to a top-tier school in India for my masters degree and I'm now a graduate student at a well-known private university in the US. I would say there is very little difference in the quality of teaching between my Indian alma mater and my current university. The main advantage here seems to be an army of teaching assistants conducting office hours, "precepts" and such which probably help struggling students. But I think the in-class lectures, homework assignments and exams are of the same quality.

I also went to a second-tier private school for my undergraduate degree and that is where I experienced the sort of teaching the article talks about. I think, like most of India's other problems, it boils down to economics. I paid about about $1200 in total for my four year undergraduate degree. I believe the government supplemented some of this with a grant to private institutions for students who met a merit criterion. But my point is that this is very little money and you can see why it would be quite difficult to recruit and retain high quality teaching talent.

The top-tier institutions - the IITs, IISc, IISERs, ISI and so on - don't have great salaries but they make up for it with prestige, perks (on-campus housing, cheap food, discretionary financial awards) and research grants. But beyond the cream of the crop, unfortunately it isn't a rational economic decision to go into teaching in India. This isn't to say nobody does and I've had a few really great teachers even at my undergraduate school but I also realize that India is a poor country with no social safety net. I'm not going to judge anybody for choosing financial security over social service.

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