Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

qz.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 72 posts

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

#61

Post by jseliger »

saraid216 wrote: post #38
jseliger wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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!

If you're deeply interested in these things, send me an e-mail—the address is in my profile.

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

#62

Post by auctiontheory »

vivin wrote: post #59
guylhem wrote: post #48

The article is partial to a very western view of education. Lecturing from a book, or from notes, is sometimes the right thing to do, especially when teaching to students who will have trouble following the class otherwise (by lack of discipline, by just being unused to that way of teaching or simply if they can't afford the references book you are asking them to read, or don't have the time to do that). The most imp…

> Lecturing from a book, or from notes, is sometimes the right thing to do, I don't see how this can ever be useful. I grew up in the Middle East and attended an Indian School which followed the CBSE syllabus. There was nothing in the syllabus per se that inspired me to ask why. That came from my innate interest and from the occasional teacher who went beyond what was taught. The focus was on rote memorization. You c…

Double upvote.

I suspect that someone raised in a Western educational system simply cannot comprehend what a typical rote-memorization-driven Indian school education looks and feels like. Because it's insanity.

I worry that the US is moving in the same direction, with all the focus on testing-driven "standards." (Not to mention the use of calculators in math class.)

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

#63

Post by tn13 »

duskwuff wrote: post #46
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…

> Ever heard of the Borland Turbo C compiler? Yeah, that's still used to teach students C/C++, with outdated (and non-standard) code. So THAT'S where all the bizarre Turbo C++ questions on Stack Overflow are coming from! I've always wondered.

And Java is taught by giving short notes to students.

Java is an object oriented platform independent programming language invented by XXX in year ####. It runs in a JVM. blh blah blah..

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

#64

Post by tn13 »

anoncow wrote: post #51
lake99 wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> are Anglo-American methods [...] transferred back to Indian universities by returnees who start academic careers? Of all the people I have come across, only two of them finished a session of post-doc in the west, and came back to India. One of them is at IISc, and I forgot where the other one is. To answer your question: my impression is that Indian academics seldom continue their academics in India. Most Indians w…

Perhaps MOOCs can save India.

Not really. Indian students dont want to learn, they want a degree to a get a job that has no correlation with their degree.

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

#65

Post by RestlessMind »

microarchitect wrote: post #40
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…

This. The main problem at Indian undergrad institutions is lack of good teachers. And that is because of poor pay. I went to a top colleges at one of the decent universities (a step below IIT / REC). I had exactly one great teacher who was passionate about his subjects. 10-15% were decent. But most of them were a joke. And my friends at other colleges under this university, too, had similar experiences.

Apart from good pay, another reason for having poor teachers is reservation / quota for teaching positions. So even if someone doesn't deserve to be teaching, one would be doing so just because of his/her caste.

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

#66

Post by RestlessMind »

One of the biggest disadvantages plaguing Indian education system is quota / reservations - 50% of the seats are reserved. So which means half of your peers are there just because of their caste / gender.

Even worse, quota exists for teaching positions too. So half of your teachers are in that position only because of their caste / gender and not because of mastery over the stuff they are teaching.

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

#67

Post by MarkMc »

lappet wrote: post #33

The author of this article tweeted a response by a Professor from the same college: http://kafila.org/2013/05/06/the-golchakkar-of-premier-insti...

That author really needs to take a class called How To Write Plain English.

I struggled to parse text like, "...the 88 teachers who teach can only be used as Indian samples, if and only if, one is ready to situate them in socio-economic givens" or "... disabling us from looking at the micro-manifestations of issues from a methodologically nuanced, institutionally useful and politically sensitive position"

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

#68

Post by aangjie »

lake99 wrote: post #42
saraid216 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Not quite. I meant that my the course description that I provided was a random sampling. I googled for EE programs, picked a university randomly, went to its list of courses, and picked a course randomly.

Haha.. am still tempted to say that still doesn't ensure a random distribution as it's a lot more likely you picked a link from the first few pages for search results. :P. Either way, your point is valid.

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

#69

Post by aangjie »

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?

Hmm.i couldn't find anything more that the wikipedia page(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_India) and this http://codeformumbai.org/ . But i think it's time for india to revise it's policies from purely caste based towards purely economy based. And indeed there are some changes on that regards (called creamy layer OBCs) see here . http://obcreservation.net/ver2/forum/6-ncl-what/2104-who-are...

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

#70

Post by anoncow »

skytalon wrote: post #52
anoncow wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I did the no bribe thing once. I wanted a certificate and the officer wouldn't give me one. Went to the bmc office almost every week for 3 months. Gandhiji would have got me the certificate on the very first day.

It is interesting to notice that Gandhiji is on every currency note. No one else is good enough to be on it?

I hope they stick to Gandhiji.
Post reply on HN