Private Universities in India provides you just a Degree- A student rant • Hacker News Board

Re: Private Universities in India provides you just a Degree- A student rant

#21

Post by geekam » Sat, Nov 26, 2011, 4:16 PM UTC

I understand your frustration like many others on this forum. I graduated more than a decade ago, when Web was still in its early stage(s). If I were going to an engg school today, I would have similar thoughts as you are having right now.

I will not advice you to drop-out or in other words, throw a degree out of the window. I think @doosra does mention that you can just do minimal in college to get a degree and I think you should do that.

There are open courses from some of the best universities around and especially now that Stanford has Spring courses online, free; there is no way you should give up.

Spend more time learning and doing. You just don't only have online courses to see but also, the time is ripe to build things. We have an awesome platform and some good problems to solve. Maybe students like you will come up with some, who knows.

Happy hacking!

Re: Private Universities in India provides you just a Degree- A student rant

#22

Post by geekam » Sat, Nov 26, 2011, 4:18 PM UTC

akkishore wrote: post #20

You say you have finished 3 semesters of your graduation. But I think 4,5,6 semesters are where you learn most of the core of CS, atleast as per Indian curriculum. Give yourself some time. Start a CSE club at your college. Organise lectures with the help of your serniors. Or each one of you can start learning about a technology and start sharing it with each other in the meetups. Organise programming contests, organi…

In some cases, 'learning' CS has a different meaning in India. In fact, learning itself is a very different philosophy at this moment. Even in Engineering schools, learning is mostly bookish, rote and is all about clearing exams to get grades and degree(s).

So, it may happen that the OP might get interested in later semesters, I doubt it. I have been there more than a decade ago and I don't think a lot has changed.

Re: Private Universities in India provides you just a Degree- A student rant

#23

Post by geekam » Sat, Nov 26, 2011, 4:25 PM UTC

akarambir wrote: post #7

kapilkaisare wrote: post #5

Been there, done that. But if you're seriously considering dropping out, good luck with finding a job in the sort of competitive market you're in. With more than a thousand applications per job listing, the recruiters will first cut out the non-degreed/non-engineers. Then you're looking at a select few (like Zoho) who may take you in for a marked down pay which gets you no where. Or you can try to make it on your own…

I do and I've tried various methods to be more productive about my learning and projects. Still the college stuff really pisses me off.

I think frustration about college can be good as well. I have always used that frustration to put my time to better learning and projects. Each time you encounter those problems, think how can you make things better. Start making things better for yourself, like start your own group for similar minded folks in your college/school. Maybe you will arrive at solutions that may help build better educational resources for people who actually want to learn and not just clear exams.

Re: Private Universities in India provides you just a Degree- A student rant

#24

Post by spal » Sun, Nov 27, 2011, 4:32 PM UTC

akarambir wrote: post #3

ennovates wrote: post #2

As the author mentioned- the main problem is spoon feeding. This should be checked in early childhood and school education. Moreover a professor won't waste his time if students are not ready for learning.

then why are professors taking full salaries. For sitting idle?? It is their duty to make interest of the students. If a student have chosen Computer course. This means at some level he likes it. Then a professor can make that student to think more about it and learn whys and whats of computers

I am not very sure that a student choosing Computer Science implies that he likes it at some level. It is very common in India to choose Computer Science or Electronics for engineering studies because every other guy seems to be doing the same thing.

Re: Private Universities in India provides you just a Degree- A student rant

#25

Post by jayaram » Tue, Nov 29, 2011, 4:58 PM UTC

My 2 cents of advice.

Do not drop out unless you are filthy rich. It doesn't work in an Indian environment where companies and jobs depend on what your under graduate college is and your qualification. Companies only visit BIG and reputed colleges and no matter how bad you are, you might be lucky in getting selected for the job. That is what you are paying for, its for that damn job and not for the research and education.

But I think you are going in the right direction. If I look back at myself 4 years ago, I am in the same position as yours. Its good that you are looking at the MIT and Stanford's courses. They help you a lot in learning new concepts. Also make yourself comfortable with programming. at the end of the day, it boils down to how good you can apply your concepts and code stuff. Find some interesting projects on Github. Fork it and work on it. you might not be successful at your first attempt. But you will learn a lot of things on your way. Involve yourself in various open source projects and hackers club in your local city and I'm sure you will be successfull.