Slashdot Mirror
Indian College Students Face Bleak Prospects
The New York Times has a piece on the lackluster prospects facing the great majority of Indian college graduates. Most of the 11 million students in India's 18,000 colleges and universities receive starkly inferior training, according to the article, heavy on obedience and rote memorization and light on useful job skills. From the article: "In the 2001 census, [Indian] college graduates had higher unemployment — 17 percent — than middle or high school graduates... [At a middle-tier college] dozens of students swarmed around a reporter to complain about their education. 'What the market wants and what the school provides are totally different,' a commerce student said.... [A] final-year student who expects next year to make $2 to $4 a day hawking credit cards, was dejected. 'The opportunities we get at this stage are sad,' she said. 'We might as well not have studied.'"
In the US and India. College isn't training you for a job, it is learning a field of study. Perhaps this is the issue, jobs require these "degrees" and now that is what colleges teach to, not the theory behind the area of study. My college was guilty of this, sadly.
Well, Indian companies, if your universities are turning out graduates of sub-par, and you're no longer pleased to being able to bringing products to markets in a timely manner, please to be introducing you a land where you can be outsourcing your business products and services. This land is being called America! And you can be outsourcing your technical business to it!
(We are apologizing for the quality of the technical support and code we send back. We are knowing that "Howdy Y'all! My name is Jethro! How can ah help y'all with yer blinkinlights?" and "Segmentation pwnage, core dumped, dude" isn't quite what you're used to receiving, but remember... you do get what you pay for.)
Agreed. This has nothing to do with nerds. What is it doing here? Not to mention half of us are bitter toward Indians anyway as a result of outsourcing..
Oh maybe thats why.....
"What the market wants and what the school provides are totally different," a commerce student, Sohail Kutchi, said.
Ironically, American businesses, i.e., tech companies, complain about the samething with U.S. Universities.
interesting to say that stuff is useless... if programming really is just a commodity trade, then that other stuff is useless. but if computer science consists of more than just programming (which I believe it does) then math is certainly relevant.
Reality is nothing but a collective hunch.
Let me just be the first to answer: everybody who lives in countries that outsources jobs to BRIC's ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BRIC ).
ilex paraguariensis for all
'The opportunities we get at this stage are sad,' she said. 'We might as well not have studied.'"
That is certainly an unfortunately state of affairs. But it sounds like she hit the nail on the head. From the article it sounds like schools that teach the marketable skills are out of their financial reach. If thats the case, it doesn't make sense spending money on the cheaper schools when they provide no real benefit. All you're doing there is allowing them to continue with their useless practices and putting yourself in debt.
My advice for these Students:
- Gather into small Learning Cells (about 5 students / cell)
- Setup Internet-based home study centers (eg, share houses
with FAST Internet on each of their computers)
- discuss ideas, develop skills (technical, entrepreneurial) & knowledge
from Internet sources, courses & talks
- publish & exchange ideas with similar groups
- start on-line businesses
:
- profit & live well...
When I was recruiting a replacement for me in my previous job as a financial analyst, the obedience aspect was the reason I rejected all Indian candidates. None of them, despite very high qualifications, didn't even make it to the second round, because the job required a high degree of personal initiative. I simply kept running into such a strong culture of obedience, that sometimes I had the feeling I was talking to computers: very fast, very good at what they were doing, but offering zero dissent or showing any desire to do anything on their own. A human garbage-in-garbage-out system.
It sounds like these kids want training, not Educations.
A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
Other people are having a hard time! Hooray!
"Hello, my name is Frank Nahaschanrdraventkalan, would please you be giving me the serial number of the computer/device/software which you are inquiring to problems you may be experiencing?"
Yeah, and those courses give you the analytical skills to be more than a mere rote programmer, or as I like to call them, "code parrots". All they can do is mimic what their professor told them, and have no ability to expand there knowledge to become a real developer.
Slashdot is kind of like Playboy; we aren't here to read the articles.
"That guy on the Simpsons!"
I'm a graduate student working on my masters in CS at the same school I did my undergrad at here in the US. In several of my classes, I've been stuck doing group projects with people who got their undergrad in India, and in almost every case, they just don't know their stuff. Often times, they hardly even know how to use a computer, much less program one. In one particular incident, a team mate of mine with a CS degree from India didn't even know how to mute the volume on his Windows laptop! He, of course, used said laptop in class every day, and it was constant playing sounds. I don't mean to be racist or anything, but the simple truth is that almost all of the masters students I know from the US are some variety of nerd and really know computers inside and out while almost all of the Indian masters students I've met don't have any kind of grasp on what they're doing.
To remember is that if "students aren't being taught what employers want" then other people are facing the same issue. In other words, your "competition" didn't get taught what employers want either.
.. and show prospective employers what you can do. For example, if I were to hire a graphic artist .. I would sit them down in from of a non networked computer with Zbrush installed on it and ask them to draw/create a dragon .. any dragon .. and if I like it they're hired.
When an industry is hot, a lot of people want to go into it. Unfortunately proper computer programming is not as easy as people think it is. It involves hard work and practice using proper software engineering principles, as well as a genuine interest in the subject (because you have to keep up with the latest techniques and tools). Also, in India there are a lot of institutes set up by people who haven't a clue of what they are doing. This is sad really, because India has a many talented folks who get shafted by these institutes. And the institutes that DO provide good training find it hard to compete against the ones offering certificates cheaply.
Anyway, my point is these students are complaining that they aren't being taught what they need to know. Well with the internet you can damn well learn it yourself, seriously. The great thing about computer science is that you can learn it yourself, it's not like learning surgery or gymnastics. Most importantly, don't do anything motivated by the money (because if you aren't interested in something you will be frustrated). Do some research from a library and find out what the industry wants, where it's headed. Write some software
Same for hiring programmers.
In India, a smart company would modify its hiring practices from an emphasis on paper qualifications, even experience (because it's not a reliable indicator), being able to regurgitate memorized concepts towards getting people who are resourceful, adaptable, and can demonstrate their abilities.
I agree, at least as far as the learning of the useless things. I spent 3 years taking GEC's at a "traditional" college. Alot of things I had to go through did not directly reflect what my overall major is. Since then having switched to a more technical, but not quite DeVry-esque technical, I have learned alot more about my field. But what has helped me more is being in the field rather than school. I got a job when I started college because I knew FrontPage (And now I know better) and that has also helped greatly. Working their I learned CSS and a good portion of Photoshop, networking skills, etc. It almost seems to me that the availability of apprenticeships or internships would be more beneficial to people than traditional college, at least in the Tech field. Yet companies are unwilling to do, at least in my experience.
Just come to the USA and put people here out of work since you'll work for pennies on the dollar..
Mod points here for insightful.
I'll never understand why Americans are so bitter about this. I don't have a single colleague who can say they lost their job to offshore outsourcing, or even has any trouble getting a new job for great pay.
If anything, I have only positive things to say about offshore-outsourcing. Farming out the easy stuff frees me up to pursue the more lucrative stuff, like working more with customers or developing partnerships.
Spoken plainly as one who doesn't use any advanced algorithms in their coding. Lemme guess, you paint forms and play with DB rows?
Let me enlighten you: The heart of Computer Science is ALL "math crap".
They copied and pasted the American style of education of emphasizing theory over technical skills, which is why many universities nowadays tell you to go to a vocational trade school if that is what you desire, over studying the theoretical aspects of things (not to say that some universities do not provide this but you'll have to go to certain places for certain things). For instance, many years ago, you went university and BAM, as soon as you come out, you get a job that pays better than your coworkers even though you might not have the slightest idea of how to 'manage' or 'be a journalist'. Nowadays, the chances of you actually doing what you learned from school is increasingly rare and those who do are considered fairly lucky. It's common knowledge that an engineering student after graduation may have to go to a community college or a technical school to pick up skills that the workplace demands to become more marketable and earn more money. What the markets want is different from what the schools deliver to the students.
I think it's a bit too harsh to say that all of that stuff is useless, but it is true that few students will get much use out of it until much later in their careers.
My complaint is that most schools don't teach good large project management skills. Everybody works on toy programs by themselves or in small groups and on short deadlines. That is highly unrealistic in the real world and teaches the kids a lot of bad habits IMHO. I think it would be better if the schools put more emphasis on project management (both from a manager and coder perspective), including version control, planning, testing, debugging, and so forth. Grading would be a bit more difficult, but the ability to compare students based on their amount and general quality (how many fixes did it require afterward?) of checkins would be a good place to start.
The class could even mix it up a bit between writing their own project and maintain last year's project, especially if they build stuff that is actually useful and post it online. Granted, this is an ambitious project for a classroom, but I think it's the only way to properly prepare students for the real world.
I read the internet for the articles.
Interesting. That averages out to 611.1 students per school.
Coder's Stone: The programming language quick ref for iPad
Interesting, just a few months ago India was claiming they have a labor shortage. Hmm... looks like you can't turn an agrarian country into a high-tech hub with a wave of the magic neoliberal wand after all.
u siness/16cnd-INDIA.html?ex=1297832400&en=b9fcbd416 d93b147&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/16/business/worldb
Spoken plainly as one who doesn't understand the job market.
The heart of most Computer Science *jobs* is in "painting forms" and "playing with DB rows".
Math is definitely important for a generic computer science course, but I think the real problem lies in the fact you CAN NOT train just anyone to be a good programmer. They have to have a genuine interest in the field, have a good logical mind, and preferably not have much interest in doing anything else with their life for the next 10 years...
I started in computer science in 1995, but because I was working full time I only did a few courses a year. This allowed me to see multiple generations of people going through the first and second year "programming" courses. To be polite, the quality of individuals did not improve as the profession became known as a good way to make money. And, in true university fashion, the difficulty of the courses progressively declined. In my third year software engineering course (probably 2001-2002) we didn't have to complete the final project because someone (I can only assume they were well connected) complained that it was too hard to get it done and study for final exams at the same time.
HOLY CRAP! this is my daily experience at work!
/. account, but this is what I see everyday...
I can't for the life of me remember my
IT people that can't fix their own MS word problems...
give them instructions on step by step how to do something, no problem. Give them an exe and tell them to install a program, it'll never happen.
Everyone I've talked to says the same thing. give them a structured problem and they knock it outa the park. give them an open ended real world problem without structure given to them, and they are lost.
It makes me feel good about myself and the ability to think, and figure out what concept to apply and how to apply it...
It's far easier to teach someone who can think how write programs than it is to teach a programmer how to think, as you've demonstrated clearly enough.
If you want to learn how to approach the profession with a scientific outlook, which will enable you to get an entry-level programming job today and get a new one tomorrow when industry makes a major shift in languages or paradigms, go to the university. The math will make your programming better. The multivariate calc is possibly the least useful math class a CS major could take. More important is set theory, matrix theory, probability, and statistics.
Another way to evaluate degrees is this: were you taught how to think and program, or how to write Java? If Java becomes dead in 5 years, the person who learned how to program will shrug his shoulders and move on. The person who learned how to write Java will become unemployed. (Note: I'm just picking on Java; replace it with language X, and the statement holds true).
Funny. I went to school for art, and instead have been a software developer for the past 10 years. I have had to amass my own collection of trig, geometry, calc, and linear algebra books to make up for my 'lacking' education.
I'm a double major (math and CS) and I'd like to think that I can program AND do math. In fact, my job requires both! The purpose of math in CS degrees is to encourage logic, pattern-recognition, and problem-solving, things a good coder needs. Admittedly, most programmers won't ever use advanced math. Even I don't use calculus on the job- just very interesting trig.
You are reading a copy of my copyrighted post.
Well, duh. They should have taken a programming course. Studying CS to learn programming is like studying Economics when you want to go into business - economics and business are both about money, after all.
The problem is that stupid companies think programmers with a degree are better, even though there are no university level programming degrees.
(spoken as a programmer with a CS degree, but I got it because I love math and theory)
I believe posters are recognized by their sig. So I made one.
I guess all those finite element and fluid flow analysis packages out there just wrote themselves. You know about those, right? They're what drove the design of computers for a very long time. Computers weren't designed from the beginning to let you download music, videos, and basically supplant television as the glass teat in your life.
Universities aren't a place to learn vocational skills.
This is especially true for CS. If you just want a decent paying job, you can get the needed skills at lots of places like ITT-Tech. You don't need a CS degree to write web front-ends and PHP/SQL scripts, or to be a sysadmin.
If you don't want to learn the theoretical foundations, why get a CS degree? You don't get a physics degree if you want a job fixing cars.
Unlimited growth == Cancer.
I know *I* can't. Damn proprietary hardware. Anyone ever seen an API for paper bags, specifically wet ones? Damn hard to find one.
Now... *plastic* bags, that's another thing. I can code my way out of all kinds of plastic bags. But hey... who can't?
"I have as much authority as the pope, I just
don't have as many people who believe it" - George Carlin
This article is unfair to center the attention on Indian education. I can say the same thing for US education in general. School is about regurgitation and not much else. Personally I feel that my university degree is more about how well I listen to directions and follow orders than thinking.
Well, I don't think it is a big of a problem as it is made out to be, I know people who have lost their jobs to outsourcing. However, I think the underlying hate comes from the people who have to call tech support at a placed based in India, and then can't understand or communicate with the person on the other end of the line. All things considered as well, if your calling support, you are probably already frustrated enough, and now you can't understand what the other person is saying? I can see that being pretty aggravating. Worthy of hating an entire nation? Probably not.
Well, I lost a cushy job to outsourcing... only it wasn't Indians... it was Canadians! Damn their ice hockey, bacon, and Rush!
GetOuttaMySpace - The Anti-Social Network
The article fails to mention that the IIT's are among the best schools in the world. It's not all bleak.
Second this.
There's way too much emphasis on starting your own projects from a clean slate, which is very rare in the 'real world.' More often you get handed the spaghetti-code mess of the "last guy," to puzzle over and figure out how to document and maintain.
Too much CS education is focused on the very beginning of the software lifecycle. That's like churning out doctors that can only deliver babies, when what the market needs are GPs and geriatric specialists. Grads need to know not only how to start a new project themselves, but how to pick up one that's in the middle of development, or that's well into its maintenance phase.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
"And in this supposedly English-language college, the professors often used bad grammar and spoke in thick accents."
Hm...how is this any different from colleges in the US?
Don't worry here in the US our elementary schools are also more challenging than our Universities. I frequently have difficulty helping my child do her homework, while I handle my CS degree work just fine. //Not really, the problem is more either understanding the nonsense directions given that can only be understood in context to the lecture my child obviously didn't listen to, or getting my child to understand basic concepts in order to do her homework.
Wait one minute... you mean we aren't all going to be well paid and rich? This sounds like that dot com thing that I heard about. I'm going to go back to my true plan, selling Amway products. Nutri-lite anyone?
That math stuff is a lot harder to learn later in life when your head is crammed to bursting with the millions of lines of code you've written and maintained over the years. Be glad you had the chance.
Oh, and computer programs have a lot in common with mathematical proofs (or at least they should).
We are seeing the global results of applying assembly line practices to education. It makes no difference what country we are talking about. The only reason this is such a hot topic is because the US Technology Czar and the businesses he is in bed with want the US to believe India is being chosen for out sourcing because of "More Skilled" employees. In fact we will likely find out that we are all pretty similar and that one group is chosen over the other for money reasons and to support the desire of executives to make 300x and 400x what the rest of us make. When do we outsource our executive positions to India to our similarly skilled and yet less expensive collegues?
"lackluster prospects facing the great majority of...college graduates"
:P
Speaking as a college CS/Network graduate whom, 2 years after graduating, is still working as a janitor, allow me to welcome you to this planet.
In my case, it's not because I have inferior skills or training. It's because most employers I've had contact with see a diploma/degree as "quaint" and "irrelevant". Since I don't have 5+ years of experience, excellent "soft skills" (PHB corporate-speak if I've ever heard it), and I don't want to sell anything, I'm apparently unemployable, no matter what school I went to or how well I did.
Here's a brief story that gives contrast to the wonderfully frustrating experience I've been putting up with for over 2 years: I have a friend (who dropped out of highschool no less) who works in IT. One of his co-workers, a supposed IT expert who makes ~$100k a year, recently said to him "I assume we'll be using FAT32 for our 1TB backup drive's filesystem?". It seems to me, someone making $100k/year in IT should be aware of things like the limitations of FAT32 and Windows' implementation thereof. My friend tells me this sort of ineptitude is common among the IT "experts" he works with, and he spends more time correcting their mistakes than doing his own work. Meanwhile, I can't even get an *interview* for entry level jobs that a highschool student could perform.
Not that I'm bitter or anything. Anyways, back to washing floors so I can make my student loan payments. Thanks for listening
I find that as a materials engineer the gen.ed. classes I took have much more application in the real world than some of my required clases. I've never had to use vector calc in 7 years, but I have needed a general understanding of business, contracts, and IP.
Theory is nice, but in the real world sometimes it's better to fix problems than understand them.
I have a lot of friends/colleagues whom did their undergrad in India and their graduate school here in the U.S. and have discussed Indian education quite a bit. As it turns out, India tries to educate the masses and the cost is nearly free. One friend did his M.S. in India before coming here and I think he said it cost 500 rupees total. I forget the dollar/rupee conversion, but remember he made a joke that 500 rupees was equivalent to "50 bucks" or some unexpectedly low price (from my perspective in the United States).
Isn't education simply a supply/demand issue, and if the masses are able to attend college, won't the overall value be correspondingly diminished? I wonder if any of you have first-hand experience with this?
I'll never understand why Americans are so bitter about this. I don't have a single colleague who can say they lost their job to offshore outsourcing, or even has any trouble getting a new job for great pay.
Either you're lucky or you don't know enough people who are impacted. All these big companies are moaning to the politicians that they can't find qualified cheap labor here in the U.S. when they don't want to pay for training American workers who want a higher wage based on experience and a benefit package. I'm waiting for the other shoe to drop when all these Indians are dumped for cheaper African labor.
Actually, the fact that you find advanced math topics "crap" says loads about your particular education/skillset.
I believe you'll also find that there's a group of us who face a different problem from outsourcing development.
My peers (I'm a sysadmin by trade) often discuss the quality of what they've had to deal with when it comes to products developed this way. I read a report recently from one that noted data from the past 4 years showing that while the per-hour cost was low, the products typically took longer to develop, were of much poorer quality (crimes against database normalization, etc), and often had issues following the specs, or followed them in odd ways. These things tend to lead to massive headaches for your average sysadmin
While it's not completely possible to say that some of these issues might not have happened locally too, it's pretty clear there isn't much value to be gained from outsourcing.
ash
I don't hate India. I hate the companies that route my calls there.
What's annoying about the Indians taking the calls is that they pretend to understand when you use words or phrases they don't get, and it quickly becomes apparent as they struggle to troubleshoot a problem they never comprehended in the first place. But they're taught to do this, just like they're taught to tell me their name is Steve or John or Bob. Again, it's really the fault of the company putting the almighty dollar ahead of customer satisfaction.
120 characters for a sig? That's bloody useless.
You are an exception, that is all. While it would not be too much of a streatch to get an art degree and become a web designer or something of the sort, one generally will not take their art degree to adobe or microsoft and say "You know, I really want to program." and actually have any chance of getting a job.
Build a few world-class universities like IIT and neglect everything else
==> prestige but lots of unemployment and an underperforming economy.
Build lots of perfectly-OK universities
==> educated population, opportunity for the many bright people in your population of a billion, vibrant economy and not just in a few geographical niches.
Damn their ice hockey, bacon, and Rush!
Alright, enough of the conservative-bashing...oh never mind, you meant the band.
A little math goes a long way in siplifying algorithm coding. Oh, sorry, you're not an analyst, you're just a programmer.
This is no joke. I can tell you a story from the inside. Once I tried to interest my faculty colleagues at a Large University That Will Not Be Named Here in setting up an exit exam for our degree program. A big comprehensive bugger that would "certify" our graduates in a measureable way and in particular specific skills. (This is in a scientific/technical field, by the way, so such skills are easy to define.)
Before all of you who are still students gasp in horror, remember the long-term advantages this would provide: first, you know in detail exactly what you need to know as a senior to leave when you come in as a freshman. You can use that knowledge to study more efficiently during your four precious years. (Indeed, some bright student entrepreneur would no doubt think to correlate student exam performance with whether the student had professor X or Y, so you could surely use it to select your classes and teachers, too.) Second, your degree is far more valuable because it's backed up with specific, verifiable warranty in these grade-inflated days. Since every graduate has passed the exam, a firm or graduate school knows for sure and in detail what graduates of this particular program know. That's the kind of gold-plated guarantee of competence that makes employers feel all warm and fuzzy about you when you turn up for your job interview looking appallingly young, like you started shaving yesterday.
Third, and most importantly, it would give a way for employers to feed back to we faculty what they did and did not want their employees to know. We'd invite them to help design the exam, and they'd give us feedback from when they hired one of our graduates. In this way we'd learn exactly what skills were wanted out there in the Real World(TM), and we'd learn rapidly whether we were successfully teaching those skills.
What do you suppose happened? Do you think this proposal went anywhere? If you shook your head cynically, you are right. In fact, folks were a bit horrified by my suggestion that employers have some influence in the curriculum. Good grief, didn't I realize that knowledge flowed from us (the university) to them (mere tradesmen), not vice versa? Next I'd be saying the purpose of education was merely to make a man a more skilled worker deserving of a higher wage, and not to open his mind to the wonders of the Cosmos, enrich his soul, bring him closer to God, whatever...
I couldn't even find out what happened to our graduates -- who had hired them, what fields and types of positions they'd gone into. The data had never been collected, and no one was interested in doing so. Amazing. Blew my mind, I tell you. Any other business that spent so little effort finding out whether its "product" was meeting the needs of the market would tank. But luckily in modern America "education" is the new "good breeding" -- it can mean nothing at all in a practical, tangible sense, so long as it sets you apart in some ineffable way as a "quality" person.
If he is exercising independent business judgement while selling those credit cards, he may be getting a better education than any that one can get in any school.
No data, no cry
Globalization at its finest.
Are you...Are you some kind of genius?
No, ma'am, I'm just a regular Slashdot reader.
Funny, I graduated in '03 and have been gainfully employed doing embedded programming for the last 5 years. Between contracts I'm beating the head hunters off with a stick because they can't find anyone capable of doing C and Assembly for embedded targets. You can keep your "painting forms and playing with DB rows," I'll stick to safety critical real time applications.
And this is different from American customer service how?
I agree, however: "learning a field of study," is not what most people in college want, nor what most employers are looking for.
What most students want is job skills. Few students have the inclination (or spare funds) to learn for the sake of learning for four years, and then spend another two or three at a trade/professional school, before they can get a real position.
Students go to various schools in great part because of the job prospects they think they'll have on completion. Only the rich can afford to simply go because it will be intellectually stimulating. Plus, mixing together people who just want job training with people who are fundamentally interested in learning is a mistake; neither are going to be satisfied with the results.
To be honest, I think we need to remove some of the social stigma surrounding trade schools in the U.S., and we should have a clear path for students that just want to get job skills. Maybe the companies themselves could even help fund them, and in return get to dictate parts of the curriculum (via directed tax contributions, if not voluntarily). That would remove the education/industry disconnect. Students who wanted an 'education' would be able to go to college, and students who want 'job training' and a near-guaranteed job in a relatively short amount of time could go to the trade schools.
I think in the U.S. we have dragged 'childhood' further and further out; there is no reason why a person should have to go through nineteen or twenty years of schooling before they can survive on their own in the economy. Education needs to be made more relevant to what students want to learn, and more rigorous earlier in the curriculum. Huge swaths of my own education were nothing but wasted time because of the way the system is currently set up; there is no reason why a motivated 15 or 16-year-old shouldn't be able to be out learning a skill, if that's what they want to do. Making them acquire thousands of dollars in debt and years of wasted 'education' that they won't use first, helps no one.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
I would be seriously suprised if your elementary students even knew what the hell ZFC was, let alone if they could actually prove something trivial with it. I would also like to see your elementary students do quantum mech.
From all the American educated scientists, mathematicians, and engineers: Fuck off, asswipe.
There are a few degree paths that can or do lead to taking a test. Lawyers have to take the bar. Engineers have the option of taking Professional Engineer tests (required for many positions and to advertise yourself as an engineer). There might be a few other professions. But even these examples support your proposition: certification leads to focused study and higher pay.
They can get jobs as TA's in American universities where they can require the students to obediently engage in rote memorization. All we need to do is reduce the xenophobia in the US's immigration policies.
Seastead this.
Project management is not a computer science skill; it's a software engineering skill (software engineering != computer science, although I feel, by experience, that software engineering skills are very important for computer scientists to learn). However, there are schools now that offer software engineering degrees which do explain some of the methodology and practices behind software engineering. Project management does fit in with a software engineering degree, exactly in the same way as project management techniques fit in with the traditional engineering disciplines.
I believe that for most industry positions in the software industry, a software engineering degree would be a better fit than a computer science degree, since the software engineering degree better prepares students for some of the conditions and practices that they'll see in industry. At my school, the software engineering degree also contains courses on teamwork and other engineering practices (sometimes alongside traditional engineers). A computer science degree, by definition, is geared toward people who want to become computer scientists. Computer scientists are focused more on research than software engineers, who are focused on building software. A computer scientist is to a software engineer as a physicist is to an electrical or mechanical engineer. Scientists are focused on expanding knowledge and doing research, whereas engineers are focused on applying scientific knowledge to practical uses.
I spent a lot of time with Indian college graduates in grad school. Some were smart and others couldn't even find a computer let alone program it. I can say the exact same thing about American / European / (insert your nationality) graduates.
One thing I will say about Indian college graduates is that they *tend* not to think outside the box. If the solution wasn't painfully obvious or spelled out in the textbook or lecture notes, then some of the Indian students would run into serious problems. Also some Indian students would ace courses which required large amounts of memorization but would fail practical courses.
Agreed. This has nothing to do with nerds. What is it doing here? Not to mention half of us are bitter toward Indians anyway as a result of outsourcing. You've been watching Lou Dobbs too much! Bad Dog!
I spent 3 years taking GEC's at a "traditional" college. Alot of things I had to go through did not directly reflect what my overall major is.
My degrees are in a field totally unrelated to CS, but I had to take plenty of courses that didn't directly pertain to my major(s). But, in all fairness, the goal of an undergraduate university education has traditionally been to provide a broad general education combined with *some* concentration within the field of the student's degree. To have a university undergrad degree assumes a certain set of skills across the curriculum--the ability write correctly, the use of critical thinking skills, as well as a basic understanding of the sciences, the arts, math, literature, language, etc.
That's supposed to be the difference between college and a trade school. Not that trade schools are bad--they just have different goals.
With a bachelor degree one would usually expect that an employer or graduate school completes the training necessary to enter the workforce.
I disagree. Tools are transient, and the features of each become more commoditized each year. The american programmer chases "learning new tools" with each programming "generation." This in itself isn't bad, but more often than not, rolling your own for a specialized situation is a skill that needs to be present at all times.
It's been said before in the perspective of not knowing how things work on the inside (especially in language wars) but I've run into more junior programmers that don't understand how to analyze and debug systems because of a simple ignorance of the "magic" of , be it networking, compilers, operating systems, sparse and/or associative arrays, code optimization in large scalable systems, the network stack, internal type representation, threading, memory usage, security...
In each of these topics, I've been on a team of programmers that simply wrote VB-style windows apps for so long they couldn't tackle a bug in one of these more difficult issues. I don't advocate that every programmer needs to learn all these topics before starting, but they have to know that there are layers beneath the tool, and that such layers are subject to examination.
Even now, I'm reengineering a large-scale system that made some horrible scalability decisions. They had a simple point-click, drag-drop style of application construction, and couldn't understand how to optimize for the real-world data throughput the end product needed to satisfy. So here I am, the "math guy", ripping out chunks of tool-generated sequential searches, file caches, and other endless layers, to streamline.
SO I argue that the *jobs* will always have a mix of programmer types, but if you hire only mousemonkeys, you're risk not having a skillset ready to tackle the "difficult" things.
Didn't make the visa lottery I see.
Those aren't computer science jobs you're talking about. They're code monkey jobs.
But it helps if you want to design new cars, new materials for cars, new ways of controlling cars, etc. /motorhead: learned algebra from engine modification as a kid
I drank what? -- Socrates
All I can say is.. good! Welcome to our world. I'm not trying to troll, but I'm pleased to hear this.
Can you imagine? A fourth year student is having trouble with new code...but the root cause is a module he wrote 4 years ago.
The student isn't really ready to PD this mess...so will the teachers then be required to dig into a large, unique, code base built over four years to help a student? I suppose they could hire people to help in this capacity...but to expect a student to 'sink or swim' would be cruel!
Blar.
If you are not an engineer or a doctor, then you are nobody. This is an outlook that is very prevalent among Indian parents - there are only two professional areas worth studying (although MBA has recently joined the two) for any indian student. All other fields (pure sciences, arts, humanities, commerce etc) are considered last resorts and muster very little respect. Graduates in such areas are not as esteemed or valued as their engineer friends, thus they receive less exposure and lesser opportunities.
Which college do you go to? the one on this end of the street or the one on the other end? as a result of this idolatry of disciplines, engineering colleges and medical schools are cropping up like mushrooms everywhere. starting an engineering college is a very easy and profitable business venture in India. This proliferation of institutions (with the wrong motives) thus leads to subpar standards of education - so even the engineers/doctors now are not trained properly in basic skills.
Universities are not for teaching communication skills. That's what society is for. if you cannot converse well with others, if you cannot carry yourself with confidence and in general cannot interact socially, then it's probably not the college's fault. it is up to the students to read non-curricular english books (which a college cannot, and shouldn't force), to form groups, try out new ideas and socialise more. Being anglicised, active and outgoing should not be considered a stigma anymore, and certainly should not be considered unpatriotic. The mindsets of students (and more importantly, of overbearing parents) should adapt to these new circumstances.
There are more things than thick-accented teachers and archaic teaching methods at fault here. In a developing country like India where opportunities and population continue to explode at a devilish pace, the competition will only grow fiercer and it takes more than passive complaining about teachers to succeed.
My sig has been answered.
Umm...The Americans can draw from context better? I don't know. I can tell you I've never had a basic communication problem with American tech support, even those who aren't native English speakers. When I'm trying to convey a lot of information in a hurry, I tend to use big words and complex grammar; this can completely shut down a conversation with a foreign call center, but the American (and Canadian, to be fair) support manages to get the job done.
I'll just put it this way: I've never had to explain the same situation three times to the same person or had a tech doggedly stick to the script regardless of what I told them when talking to an American. I've worked in tech support before and have *seen* some American script monkeys at work, but it's almost a policy for the Indian (and other) call centers to rely entirely on scripts.
Example: if I tell "Joe" that I've got a problem with my new wireless NIC and I need to know where I can enter the SSID in the software, it should be clear to him that I know what the problem is and what I need to do to fix it. What does he do? Force me to go through twenty minutes of uninstalling, reinstalling, PULLING THE CARD TO GET THE MODEL NUMBER, before finally putting me on hold for ten minutes to get someone else on the phone who knows the answer to my question.
Maybe the problem is what is talked about in the article: they're trained on rote memorization, not troubleshooting. They don't know how to deviate from the norm and jump straight to a solution.
120 characters for a sig? That's bloody useless.
I want robots working for me.
C'mon, that stuff makes you think abstractly and solve problems.
Any programmer I've worked with with a degree in CS is almost always invariably smarter than ones without one.
"If you are a dreamer, a wisher, a liar, A hope-er, a pray-er, a magic bean buyer
What is being described here is the subject of Ronald Dore's book "The Diploma Disease", first published in the 1970s.
Unfortunately, education in Western countries (certainly in the UK) is going down the same path.
During my MS I attended school with numerous Indian classmates. Through several discussions about why they attended school in the US as opposed to India, it seemed that Indian schools at the BS and BA level were nothing but extentions of highschool with high demand on obediance, following proceedures, speed, and memorization. At the MS - P.h.D. level, a course was simply independent study.
I doubted this until we had a visiting professor from India for one Semester. He spent more time yelling at students for bringing coffee into the class room and for asking/commenting on his lecture than teaching anything useful. A fellow student who had a 4.0 throughout his degree failed 3 tests from him due to inability to complete the laborous but simple mathematical questions within time. The few of us that passed the class were only able to do so by pre-program his busy work into our calculators. The department dropped all grades below a B in this course after student outrage.
So needless to say, I am highly suspect of the actual education in India's Universities/Colleges.
Sign up for University of Phoenix online then and stop complaining!!
Competent African labor isn't likely to be any cheaper than Indian labor is now, and this article is a good example of why that is so. India will graduate 1.5 million people this year, and only a fraction of these people are capable of replacing Americans in the customer service business (much less the software development business). That's in a country where English has a firm foothold and where the necessary infrastructure is mostly in place. That isn't the case in most of Africa (excluding South Africa to a certain extent).
The Global economy can't even find work for more than a fraction of India's college graduates. Africans don't have a chance in Hell.
Mod points here for insightful.
I'll never understand why Americans are so bitter about this. I don't have a single colleague who can say they lost their job to offshore outsourcing, or even has any trouble getting a new job for great pay.
If anything, I have only positive things to say about offshore-outsourcing. Farming out the easy stuff frees me up to pursue the more lucrative stuff, like working more with customers or developing partnerships.
Well, because it doesn't impact you means that the problem just doesn't exist. Outsourcing is not just about the IT industry. I live in Michigan, and my state has felt the impact of outsourcing manufacturing jobs overseas and to mexico where slave labor is legal (figuratively speaking, working for $1 a day is slave labor IMHO). Please, research your facts before making wild assumptions such as "I have only positive things to say about offshore-outsourcing."
I got nothin'
Hmm, so a step up would be a code monkey? They would have their own dung to throw at their follow monkeys when something goes wrong. :)
Only it's at the college level rather than grade school.
I agree. My school actually has a class just like this. One professors plays the role of the customer, and gives us a vague description of a product that he wants. We are then left to organize ourselves, deal with version control, figure out project management, etc. Depending on the year, you either start out with a previous class's project and extend it, or start your own project. The class works very well, and we have a number of corporate sponsorships.
Is that really different from the US?
Yes, and I will let you explain why:
They spent all their time learning about useless crap like advanced multivariable calculus, matrix theory...
That "useless crap" is why American students are considerably more well rounded than our foreign counterparts (who are usually fed a steady diet of vanilla teachings for their future as cheap labor). I can understand their anger, since they are given no options to ever succeed in life.
I agree with you. Original poster is a cluetard.
As a student who can "paint forms and play with DB rows", let me tell you that finding a good job has not been easy. I'm leaving the school that is supposedly teaching me to program in favor of the school that is teaching me all that "useless crap".
In that way, students learn the consequences of bad writing and also learn how to interpret code rather than writing from scratch. Then you introduce the other topics (testing and version control, etc.) as a later topic when students will have the context of WHY it's important.
Farming out the easy stuff frees me up to pursue the more lucrative stuff, like working more with customers or developing partnerships.
The problem with farming out the "easy stuff" is that is what most entry level people cut their teeth on out in the business world. If you take away the things that the entry level people are qualified to do, they never get the chance to become senior level.
With that simple move, you've cut the legs out from under your technical competence as a society and are now at the mercy of others. This, by the way, is a great way to cause an economic collapse and possibly another depression.
Everything I need to know I learned by killing smart people and eating their brains.
I went to school for art as well, and then spent 25 years building stuff (trade show displays, furniture, houses, television and theater sets), so that when I decided to pursue a career in programming, all I had to do was learn a new language (or six).
Schools teach people to be cogs. It is safer that way. No leader (government, religious or business) really wants the schools to teach people how to think.
They'd be dangerous.
No incumbents, not no where, not no how.
Vote them out every term.
I suspect the AC isn't really from Europe. They don't enjoy a pissing contest as much as we do in the US.
I don't hate Indians for outsourcing. I hate American CEOs for being so cheap-ass that instead of taking one of the 8 million Americans currently out of work and training them, they'd rather go to another nation and hire 5-10 people for the same salary. This is the same issue in illegal immigration for me, and H* visas, and is NOT LIMITED TO HIGH TECH JOBS which are finally making a comeback.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
As a software engineer myself, I've come to realize that much of the stuff I worked on was either redundant or not all that useful. The world only needs so many routers or MP3 players and it's starting to get tired of always upgrading and learning a new product.
People will always need food. The U.S.'s first mistake was believing that mega-farms could take the place of many, small farmers creating a quality product. If you want a challenging job that is in great demand then start growing organic produce. The demand is outstripping supply right now.
Adam and Eve lived in a garden and it was considered paradise. The human body wasn't designed to sit in a cubicle 8+ hours a day and will pay a heavy price for not getting more exercise. I can tell you that from experience. People need to get over their aversion to physical labor and start thinking about what the world, not just the U.S, needs.
"Meaningless!, Meaningless!" says the Teacher. "Utterly meaningless!"
I am glad this topic came up. For all the hype sweeping up India I think they need to focus on innovation and then call themselves the next Technology Superpower. I was a victim of the Indian System. I did my undergrad there and those years were the most harrowing . All it involved was rote learning, which I was never good that. It took me 6 years to get through those 4 years. I questioned myself several times over that period. Then I came to the US and started my MS programme. What I experienced in my first few weeks was what I had been dreaming of all my life. All those ingredients like free thinking, risk taking and freedom of speech, things for which I was called rebellious were the norm here. And that is the truth in why we do not see a single Product based India IT Company in the news. All these mega companies are in the IT service segment.
Like anything, having a passion for what one does will make them better at it than someone who lacks that passion.
It's nit picking, but to throw about the term so lightly is to dishonor people who actually had to endure true slavery.
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
Also the heart of Automotive Engineering *jobs* is in "pumping gas" and "balancing tires."
You're assuming that software development IS Computer Science. Just because the job requires someone to sit at a keyboard and produce code of some sort doesn't make it a "Computer Science" job.
It is not even memorization. It is a script. The second you try to push them past the simple stuff, you are screwed. 1. "Is the plugged in". 2. "Is the turned on". The script is written to allow them to try and talk your grand mother through a problem. Real life example: My Dell LCD monitor blew the external power supply brick. I knew this when I called support. First he asked for the ID number from the computer. I explained that the monitor was not bought with a computer. On the invoice, I ordered a computer, canceled the monitor on it and bought a monitor not available as an option on that computer. I should have know I was in trouble here when he insisted that I give him the number off the computer anyway. After an hour and a half and the third time me telling the support person that I could not try his little trick of switching power cords between my monitor and computer (external power supply did not register with him), I finally got him to accept the fact that the power supply was blown. I was still fairly calm at this point, but what pushed me over the edge of screaming at him to give me his manager was when he looked up the invoice he read down to the part that said monitor canceled and told me that the monitor didn't exist and he could not help me. I had the same invoice from the dell site in front of me and could see three lines down was the monitor that had the problem. 10 minute hold 5 minutes yelling at the supervisor and I had a replacement being shipped out. It was then that I figured out Dells tech support policy. If they can kill off the customer over the phone with an aneurysm, it is cheaper than actually addressing the problem. If I ever have to talk to a Dell(or indian) tech again, the first thing I am going to do is demand the supervisor. I feel racist saying that.
if vegetarians eat vegetables why are cannibals not humanitarians.
While there is a debate ongoing about whether to train for jobs or to train purely subject matter, why not do both? I'm currently in my first year of college at a technical college (studying mechanical and electrical engineering), and we are required to get internships with businesses at the end of our first year. This internship requires us to essential join an engineer in his job and follow along to see what an engineer does for a living. This way we not only learn the theory but also see what it's used for. Now I have to admit that for engineering this isn't really a big problem, most graduates from my university have no problem at all getting a job, and with engineering it is easy to draw parallels between what you learn and the real world.
Then again, while I'm on the subject, the actual problems of transitions from college to jobs in my country (the Netherlands) is not the lack of a quality degree, but what degree it is you have. One of the most popular studies here is psychology, and while we do need psychologists (we is a crazy bunch), the sheer number of psychologists coming onto the job market trying to find jobs in other fields because the psychology jobs are quickly filled leads to managers and the like with a degree in psychology, which isn't what most companies want. So actually one of the largest problems here is not a lack of educated workers, but it's what education they have. I realize it's not exactly likely we can assign a study to someone purely based on what is needed, but one should keep in mind what they plan to do after college. The main deficits job-wise here are mainly technical studies (engineers, but also plumbers and such) as well as doctors. This is not due to a lack of people applying to med school, but we have a system similar to a lottery for a lot of studies. The government has a set number of slots for people studying medicine (don't ask me why, it's still a mystery for me) and such people with an average grade on their final exam of less than 8.5 need to essential draw straws to see if they get into a med school. So maybe it's not all the colleges fault, the government has a heavy hand in that. Possibly the government of India can do something about the problem in the education there by setting certain criteria, or emulating education systems elsewhere (the US or Europe), which have struck a balance between theory and vocational education.
Sorry about the off topic explanation to my topic, but this is the only way I can be sure you guys understand what I was trying to say...
Yeah but those people have been dead for over 350 years, I think we can broaden the term. The computer industry never had a problem with the whole master/slave paradigm, even after threats of lawsuits. ;) To be fair, slavery exists in one form of another all over the world, and in some places it's voluntary. Take Egypt for example. The majority of Egyptian slaves were proud to be working on the pyramids, generation after generation, and though it was back-breaking work, they got props for it and nobody spit on them. It took hundreds of years to build the pyramids, and unless you have thankful parties working with you, eventually you will run out of forced labor.
I take it you did NOT attended Harvard then?
Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws-Plato
What India may need is private universities offering degrees of UK universities through franchising. Note that the educational method should be 'franchised' too, not only the degree, and UK professors should be handling the examinations.
...experience in Brazil. He said that all the science teaching there was rote and gave the example of triboluminescence. He asked some Brazilian students to define triboluminescence, which they were able to do. But then he asked what would happen if he were to crush a sugar crystal in the dark with a pair of pliers, and none were able to answer.
-Loyal
I aim to misbehave.
Oh, you can always tell when the American on the other end of the phone doesn't have a clue. Long silences, lots of "ummmm", etc etc. Or they put you on hold after every question you ask because they have to ask someone else for the answer.
A university or college education (and I am not talking about for-profit edu-businesses like DeVry, ITT, or U of Phoenix, but REAL universities and REAL colleges) is not just about getting a job. It is about educating a well rounded person that can continue to educate them self and have the kind of mental flexibility that being a life long success requires.
That said, at some point the rubber meets the road and real world skills are needed. Hopefully one gets the fundamental skills they need by specializing in an area of interest.
As for India, well they tried to create an environment of success without the long evolutionary track the West and other successful cultures have under gone. They attempted to leap frog to the front. That doesn't create an innovative culture.
Now that corporate America has been burned by India many of them are returning to the US or looking to China, Russia, and elsewhere.
Lots of the Saudi elite and middle classes have gone and done religious studies degree after much prodding from parents only to find their knowledge skills in the Koran are as useful as a one legged camel in the real world. So now you have this large group of unemployed disillusioned people who see the elite running up a huge national credit card bill with very little if any of it assisting their position. I can see things in the Saudi states getting very messy soon if things are not fixed.
How is this different than a degree in English in the US?
It's called Software Engineering
After 3 days without programming, life becomes meaningless
- The Tao of Programming
What's annoying is that the companies who hire these people don't make use of the intelligence they've purchased and allow them to make their own decisions and judgement calls. If they were *allowed* to come up with creative ideas, they'd probably be as good as or better than their American or European counterparts. ---- It's the management stupid.
But... it can't be... it's a car analogy, there are no good car analogies on slashdot!
After 3 days without programming, life becomes meaningless
- The Tao of Programming
Let me guess, you wanted to call it "No College Student Left Behind"?
my blog
Are you JOKING? "Those people"? You ignorant fuck. There is still real slavery going on in the world right now, buddy. Which is exactly the reason we shouldn't broaden the term so that "slave" means "poorly paid worker".
Lots of good stuff in this thread but this is the best. I think the going-to-college-by-default contributes to a lot of our problems with education. When everyone goes to college and pretty much expects to do well (on account of the grade inflation at their high school), the whole system gets dumbed down to the extent that college grads seem to have the same basic english&math skills that incoming freshmen used to have. Seriously, I've been too afraid to look in the last few years: what % of college grads can write 2 pages of text that argues a point, backs it up with logic and evidence, and is basically "correct" in terms of grammar and word usage. (Hint: I know it's low 'cause I think only about 40% of CEOs can do this)
My turnips listen for the soft cry of your love
The closest thing that we see to slavery in most places now is economic slavery. I don't mean that people are poor; I refer to the situation where on accepting a contract, a person immediately accepts debt for the equipent or time or services that are provided up-front. In this context, if a person leaves without settling the debt, the power of the court (or the Mafia) can in many jurisdictions do exactly that and drag the person back or drag the person to jail. This situation is found in third world factories, in sex worker arrangments, and in music industry contracts to some extent. In all cases, there is hold over the individual that can be very real. You might also argue that the recent changes in US law to prevent private individuals filing for backruptcy amount to the reintroduction of slavery in the US for many of the underprivileged, because it allows an individual essentially to sell their freedom. If personal freedom is for sale then it is, by definition, no longer inalienable.
Another interesting fact about slavery is that it is approved of by all three major mono-theistic religions. As an example, the Bible defines slave trading as sinful, but not slave ownership. Slaves won through conquest or debt are considered just.
The problem is that stupid companies think programmers with a degree are better, even though there are no university level programming degrees.
That's false. Plenty of universities offer professional terminal degrees. Such degrees are primarily focused on software development. I know this because I'm currently pursuing such a degree.From: http://compsci.rice.edu/academics.cfm?doc_id=4432 The Master of Computer Science (MCS) degree is a terminal, professional degree intended for students who will pursue a technical career in the computer industry. The MCS program normally requires three semesters of full-time study.
Some Computer Science courses do have group projects with 3-5 people, and also have internships. The tricky part with group projects is that every student has
their own mix of course modules which can make it difficult for people to get together outside regular class hours. Since employers insist that students have
"soft skills" some time must be left free for social activities. And employers insist that graduates have experience "writing specifications and designing code",
so getting someone to maintain four year old code is next to impossible.
The only way this does happen is by looking for someone who had worked on a PhD project for 3 to 5 years.
Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
I recently had to call a tech support line for a company which I knew outsourced it's call center support to India. The girl on the other end of the line called herself "Irene" and talked like a California Valley Girl (if I hadn't known that the call center was in India, I would have been fooled). It was kind of a turn-on knowing that she was working so hard to fulfill my fantasy that I was talking to an American girl. It made me wonder if I could convince her to wear a cheerleader outfit or a french maid uniform or something.
Proud neuron in the Slashdot hivemind since 2002.
It would be interesting to see a programming class focused on maintenance where instead of being given requirements and writing a program from scratch, the student is given an existing program with a serious bug or flaw and graded on how well they fix it to do what it is supposed to be doing.
I'm waiting for the other shoe to drop when all these Indians are dumped for cheaper African labor.
From what I've read, it's already happening. Not in IT yet, but in manufacturing. Clothing used to have "Made in the U.S.A." labels. Then it was "Made in Mexico." Then "Made in China." Now it's "Made in Sri Lanka" and "Made in Senegal."
IT is next.
It's going to be fun listening to all those African helpdesk people. But I don't know how to make that little click! noise with my throat that they do in order to talk back to them.
-- I'm old enough to have lived through six different meanings of the word "hacker."
I think you're calling the wrong sort of "support" line...
Travelling forward in time at a rate of 1 second per second.
Actually, that tendency seems to be a characteristic of most everyone from that culture - that is, not asking for clarification, but forging ahead despite doubt or a strong possibility of misunderstanding. I am not sure what the source of the tendency is, but I have seen it over and over in my dealings with Indian development firms and individual developers - describe specs or requirements, or how some system should work, and they nod their heads quietly (actually it's more of a head-bob than a nod), go do their work, and come back four weeks later with something that is in no way what we asked for and is based on major misunderstandings about what we actually said in the first place.
Rex is 09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
I couldn't agree more.
The "vocational" or "trade school" remark has been around since early in the 1900s when the tool & dye market was booming. People that wanted to go off and just be "thinkers" went to college, and people that wanted specific applicable skills went to trade school.
Nowadays it's really an empty offering, because a trade school education won't get you the technical skills you need either, and employers don't respect a trade school certification anyways, they want to see a degree.
So we all line up, pay our tuition and they spoon feed us the BS that you're getting a REAL education, even though many of the required topics and classes have been outdated since the 80s.
I don't believe that universities should just mass produce employees for the business sector, but they need to be more dynamic and quicker to adopt relevant new technologies.
Wouldn't it be nice if a university algorithms class was advanced enough that they would show you something like PageRank as a real world example?
Most of the 11 million students in India's 18,000 colleges and universities receive starkly inferior training, according to the article, heavy on obedience and rote memorization and light on useful job skills.
Wow. Amazing. Yeah. Who-wooda-guessed.
well americans can be as stupid. one experience with comcast when my internet was down: I called up and told them the problem. The dumbass asked me to "uninstall internet explorer". And I was like WTF you talking about? And he said "Sir, sometimes it helps to uninstall internet explorer". haha
Most customer service reps don't even have technical background to troubleshoot anything, IMO.
I don't know, we have a pretty low bar for hating nations these days...
That is all.
I was a support monkey myself at one time in the past. I memorized a lot of the most common problems but I still got in trouble a lot for making sure the customer's system was working before hanging up with them. I had a low reopen rate but that wasn't the stat they were looking at. They just wanted calls closed per hour.
Having been in that position myself I know what dealing an irate customer can be like, but by the same token there's no better way to make me irate than to do a half-assed job of helping me, even if that's not technically what your job description is. Thus my rule of thumb is to escallate early and escallate often for technical problems. Most of the time they're just as happy to get rid of you and move on to the next guy and you can move on to someone who actually knows what they're doing.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
I can't say much about commerce graduates, since I graduated with a B.E. degree in Computers (there is no seperate B.S. degree in India for software). But I certainly believe the computer education syllabus could do with a major overhaul, as well as better teachers.
...) is common - in other words, 25% of my time in college is going to be wasted studying about irrelevant topics that are extremely unlikely to be useful in my chosen profession. To give a few examples, I had to learn (by rote of course): :) )
NOTE: The following is also a rant, if you read it you can understand how dissatisfied I am with wasting several years to get a stupid paper certificate which I am not in the least bit proud of. Be warned that this is all highly subjective and biased opinion.
The syllabus for any degree in India is revised very infrequently, maybe once every 5 or 10 years - this is especially bad for a fast-changing field like computers, I guess it may be OK for mature disciplines such as mechanical or civil engineering. The first year of the 4 year Bachelor of Engineering (B.E.) course for *any* specialization (computers, electronics, mechanical
1. How cement is mixed etc. (in Chemistry)
2. Engineering drawing (isometric projection etc., useful in Civil Engg.)
3. Mechanical engg. concepts like stresses and struts (no, not Java Struts!
Now, I can understand that students need to be exposed to different fields so they can decide which one they want etc. - but why do you have to waste an entire year after someone has decided his trade, just for the 0.001% of people who might wish to change professions?
Unlike many people, I went into C.S. (its actually called Computer Engg. degree) because I like programming, not just because of earning potential. As such, I had grouped with a couple of friends and we tried to make small programs, games etc. even before entering college. Now, the only first year subject relevant to C.S. is Computer Programming - where we are initiated into the mysteries of Pascal. In the first semester (we have 2 semesters in a year btw.), I got an assignment to print 1 to 10 as output. When I hand it in, I actually get told off by the teacher for using the 'for' loop - since we hadn't got to that stage in the syllabus, it was Not Allowed to use looping constructs! This should give you some idea of the quality of teaching in our hallowed halls of learning. I quickly learned to keep inquisitive experimentation seperate from class assignments, and got through college by copying almost all assignments (which activity is *very* common btw.)
The teaching staff in most Indian colleges is abysmal, due to extremely poor salary the only people who end up there are rejects from industry who would never get a job elsewhere. I doubt most could even hold a data entry position - there were the few intelligent teachers who did explain and teach well, but they were a minority. Also, when I write a board exam the paper will be corrected by some random teacher, who might be illiterate for all I know.
If questions are based on solved problems in standard textbooks, the teacher will likely expect the exact same answer - if you use a 'while' loop instead of 'for', it might not satisfy the prof. who only wants similar structure and doesn't understand there is more than one way to do a problem. In this environment, how do you expect anyone to use modular structure, descriptive variable names or recursion etc.?
The problem of 'should be done acc. to the textbook' applies in other disciplines too - although I read a lot, when answering an English paper I wouldn't dream of using abstruse erudite diction as it would be incomprehensible to the examiner. In other words, we're actually taught to use small words since few teachers would understand complex verbiage.
Passing college exams in India is not done through understanding the course material and applying learned concepts, this would be a foreign concept to most Indian students. The right way to pass, is of cour
End of the Knowledge Worker?a ctices/ValueWorker.rdoc
http://blogs.pragprog.com/cgi-bin/pragdave.cgi/Pr
Saw his presentation on this and there's no clear answer at the end
to the question "where to tomorrow's novices opportunities come from?".
Outsourcing today takes the opportunity to gain footing on the
bottom 2-3 rungs off the 5 step skills ladder. We can't all be advanced
and experts without having spent the time to get there...
*** Sigs are a stupid waste of bandwidth.
I saw the presentation he mentioned and there's no clear answer at the end of it
to the question "where to tomorrow's novices opportunities come from?".
Outsourcing today takes the opportunity to gain footing on the
bottom 2-3 rungs off the 5 step skills ladder. We can't all be advanced
and experts without having spent the time to get there.
*** Sigs are a stupid waste of bandwidth.
is not that their english comprehension is bad or the phone service quality is miserable. It's how the call centers operate.
/.'ers would take the time and effort to pay a little extra, work a little harder to find better service. So, you get what you pay for. Stop complaining about off-shoring and pay extra for better service.
Every support issue is scripted. If they don't have a script for your error they pick one and run with it.
Pay is directly related to volume.
Pay is rock-bottom low, so you can predict what kind of support you get.
If all of the call centers were in the U.S. you would have the same situation.
Very few
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
I had the unique opportunity to work at an Indian web design firm as a project manager and technology coach. I was directly involved in screening and interviewing job applicants, and I agree many of the observations noted in the article. As nearly 100% of our clients are western companies, solid English skills are a must. We cannot compromise on this requirement, and even the office runner is required to take English classes.
To give an example of the problems with the Indian education system. One applicant brought in her senior design project, a full website, to impress us at an interview. Problem #1, every file she brought was infected with a virus. Problem #2, it was a complete patchwork job from a free scripts site (copyrights intact) pieced together with about 5% her code. Problem #3, she didn't understand the code she ripped off well enough to change a simple menu item. Problem #4, this had received a 100% grade towards her graduation. She was rewarded for searching the internet and creating a website via copy/paste. She was not taught how to create, only how to duplicate.
Any Indian with money can get a masters degree. If you pay your bill at exam time, they will pass you onto the next level. During the time I was in India, a major university was forced to shut down because of student protesting. They were protesting exam fraud investigations of the graders the university employed. Master's level exams were being graded by 10 year-olds based on: length, neatness of writing, number of paragraphs, and the 'prettiness' of the graphs. I think this is where the University of Phoenix got its model for taking people's money.
I absolutely loved my time in India, and I am not trying to bash the country. I just want to share my limited exposure to the reported problem.
Ignorant fuck? Honestly, I expected more coming from an anonymous coward. I'm saying this from an American perspective, so yes, I use the term 'those people' in reference to imported African slaves, courtesy of the British slave trading companies.
By the way, next time you post a knee-jerk, reactionary post anonymously, please have the common sense to post OUTSIDE of the quote tag. Your post looks jacked up.
I'm going to assume by your name that you're coming from a Jewish background, and well, that was pretty late in the Egyptian empire's history, relatively speaking. Plus it happened after the Egyptians conquered Israel. That's how shit was back then..you got conquered, you got enslaved. The Romans and Greeks were both famous for setting this trend. Also, Jews kept slaves as well, and according to Bernard Lewis, "Jews were indeed required by rabbinic law to try to persuade their slaves to accept conversion with circumcision and ritual immersion. A form of semi-conversion, whereby the slave accepted some basic commandments and observances, but not the full rigor of the Mosaic law, was widely practiced. According to Jewish law, a converted or even semi-converted slave could not be sold to a Gentile." Ironic that you'd mention slavery and there's a precedent in Rabbinic law that covers it huh?
I see your point though. According to what I've read thus far, the Egyptians were real jerks to the Jewish slaves. Then again, if you're enslaved, what kind of treatment do you expect? Something to ponder.
Ultimately, the word 'slave' is way too generic. I just posted the parent to get people thinking that one word has a ton of meanings, and using it in different ways doesn't dilute it. Around 3300 years ago, a Jew slaving for an Egyptian was one kind of slave, while the Egyptian slaves washing laundry and cooking meals in the homes were another.
Thanks for this post, +1 insightful. :) It was my intent to get people *thinking* about the generic term 'slave' and the connotations it has taken on since its inclusion in the English language.
Sure, the professor will show you how the various equations are derived and will answer questions, but there's no debating any of the topics. Or as my EE digital systems prof would say "You don't know this, You gonna flunk"
I was in Chennai back at the start of the year.
Plastered all over walls are posters advertising C#, Java, Oracle and so on training. It's like "Lose Weight Now" posters that are spammed all over Western City walls. They are everywhere.
They're for 3 month courses. There was one near where I was staying. In a little room in a disintegrating building, boys sat behind old PCs, learning Java. Very strange.
Made me wonder what kind of training they were getting.
It's nit picking, but to throw about the term so lightly is to dishonor people who actually had to endure true slavery.
Sure its voluntary. You can work for $1.00 a day, go back to your shack after work, and hope that $1 will somehow feed your family, or you can quit your job and starve for sure. I call it slavery because it forces people into a rigid class structure where most of the working class people are so poor (and kept that way) that they have no chance of increasing their economic status.
Yes, this does not follow the traditional notion of slavery, but most countries on this planet have outlawed it. This is the slavery of the 21st century. We can even give it a name... how does Slavery 2.0 sound?
I got nothin'
They'll be over here in America selling dope in no time.
Wanna fight ? Bend over, stick your head up your ass, and fight for air.
I am a medical doctor, and several people with CS undergrand degrees I have worked with write crappy programs compared to what I've written. I won't ever let these specific people write a computer program if it is used to treat my patients.
Out of interest, which part of the USA are you located in? Most universities base their course syllabuses on the needs of local industry, or what gives their graduates the best opportunities for employment. For companies based on computer animation, engineering, financial markets, medical imaging and encryption, such mathematics are an essential requirement.
However such courses tend to focus on the use of Matlab, Mathematica and other more theoretical programming languages such as Prolog, Lisp and Haskell.
Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
I don't see this as a pure Indian problem alone,but as an Asian problem.The whole system is tailored towards obedience and rote learning that it saps creativity and initiative from the students.
In Malaysia especially,a person doesnt ask wheter u were a national debater or a national sportsman,they just ask u ur exam results.This,to them is more important than anything else.Also,Malaysian universities are not exactly the best place to learn,they have great facilities no doubt but really crappy lecturers.They are also a breeding ground for politics where the government practically bombards them with propaganda.
Add to the fact that because the education system is racially biased,the brilliant students who cannot afford to go overseas may not be able to get aplace in the local uni's.So we have a massive brain wastage in Malaysia
After reading the article it seems like a bad IT education is the smallest of their problems. It sounds like their "hierarchy" and culture doesn't lend itself well to functioning in a college environment whatsoever. I know very little about Indian culture but from what the article covered there are limitations and fuckups all the way through the system regardless of having anything to do with IT or college. On the subject of not being properly educated in school; thats more about the student than the college. I took a semester at a local college/trade school covering beginning networking, beginning linux, core hardware/software and found it absolutely lackluster. Rather than sink into the cesspool of low performance and time wasted I took what little they offered and learned 90% of the material on my own. I read the books, I researched the internet, I played with the hardware while the other students and teacher screwed off and I ended up learning a lot, it was worthwhile. If these students don't have access to what I did then I feel bad for them but if they do and its a life or death situation like the article said then they have nobody to blame but themselves. If you need somebody to spoonfeed you and hold you by the hand the whole way through then maybe its not for you in the first place. When you get hired you certainly aren't going to be handheld so why should college be any different?
The accent.
What most students want is job skills. Few students have the inclination (or spare funds) to learn for the sake of learning for four years, and then spend another two or three at a trade/professional school, before they can get a real position.
Fine, then be my guest to go to trade school and learn to write code. Or whatever you want to learn there. I know that I like the software developers who work for me to know how to think about algorithms, to understand concepts of computational complexity, to know when a problem they've been given is more-or-less impossible (write a polynomial time algorithm to solve this NP-hard problem).
I guess if I just need a grunt to bang out simple code and that's all I'll ever want from them, then I guess a trade school grad will do just fine.
But realistically, I prefer to have flexible, adaptable learners working for me, who've been exposed to the theoretical underpinnings of their field and have a sufficiently broad-based education in other topics that we can engage in interest conversation about a wide array of liberal arts topics.
In any case, nobody is "making" these motivated young people waste their time in college. But a lot of employers want to hire college grads. I've certainly hired a few autodidacts who didn't finish college - but these were people who were so smart it didn't matter. And these are a tiny fraction of the people out there in the market.
And STILL these people would have greatly benefited in terms of social skills and teamwork skills from a college experience even if they were able to learn all the relevant academic material on their own.
Learn how to write coherently in your language of choice and how to avoid sentence fragments.
I believe we were talking about undergraduate education, particularly CS. And vocational skills like PHP or MS-Access scripting or system administration. (It's also unfortunate that in today's society calling something "vocational" is the kiss of death -- it's something that parolees and ex-cons do.) Like being a cabinet maker or blacksmith: you need to be reasonably smart; you spend a few months learning the basics and the tools (PHP or whatever); and you become an apprentice, learning on the job under the guidance of the more experienced.
Of course, that is the theory. As they say: in theory, theory and practice are the same, but in practice, they're not. It's unfortunate that today you need to go to college just because everyone does, and because it does make it more likely that you will get a better job regardless of your actual skills and abilities. And at most US colleges you'll get a crappy education by default.
I guess I just have a fantasy that undergraduate education should be about broadening your horizons and learning what's out there before you settle down with a career and family and house and all that.
(Disclaimer: I used to be a CS prof at a US university.)
Unlimited growth == Cancer.
PageRank's general concept was presented to me as a Freshman in a linear algebra class. The algorithm isn't super-difficult if you have any math background :)
These things are getting harder to find as time goes on...
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http://www.personal.psu.edu/users/j/r/jrk132/tech
http://www.ucc.asn.au/~japester/humour/foamy/tech
http://foamytoons.mirrors.corruptedtruth.com/tech
"It's time to take life by the cans." ~ Bender ("Bendin' in the Wind", ep. 3-13)
I got higher-level assistance from the engineers on Component A who finally admitted that even though this particular product has been out for over 10 years and is in its third major revision (about to be its fourth) it doesn't appear to actually work outside a sterile lab environment. They promised to put in an enhancement request to make the product work correctly.
We went with a product from a much smaller company that advertises the same functionality and costs twice as much, but has the added advantage of actually working more than 99% of the time.
HP is no better. As they have bought smaller software and hardware companies, their support and service from those companies has been ritually destroyed. The website of one small outfit bought by HP, which used to contain an excellent self-serve knowledgebase for product issues is now scrapped and replaced with their all-in-one/none-at-all website which doesn't do jack shit.
Outsourcing is of course a big favorite of huge software companies and I think it fits in their extremely fucked mentality of consuming all of the marketshare of a particular product and cutting costs (quality) in order to "unlock the profits."
The bigger these companies get, the more catastrophic their failures will be when the real market forces kick in and people get tired of trying to use absolute shit product.
My book, podcast
But realistically, I prefer to have flexible, adaptable learners working for me, who've been exposed to the theoretical underpinnings of their field and have a sufficiently broad-based education in other topics that we can engage in interest conversation about a wide array of liberal arts topics.
.NET or else their resume goes straight into the circular file, amirite?
.net and employers generally are lapping it up.
But in addition to learning all of this in their degree program, they'll need at least 10 years experience in
To co-opt another thread, the value of a degree is going down because people have turned it into simply a meaningless ephemeral state, a person has a degree and is therefore "educated". But the vast majority of these HR department's don't care about this ephemeral "educated" state beyond whether or not they have attained it. Has the candidate used peoplesoft for 10 years? Does the resume cover 5 years of Java development? 3 years of PostGIS? No? Well, that "educated" state didn't mean all that much, now did it?
Did it do this because universities started to suck? Did it do this because now everyone has a degree and supply is overwhelming demand? Did it do this because companies decided that the degree didn't mean as much? Certainly a chicken-and-egg problem, since now universities are tossing out students with a degree in Java or
My company outsources their "standard" IT support to HP. They handle desktop support and server support. Up until last month we were served by 1st level support in Colorado Springs. The 1st level help desk is now located in Costa Rica.
Even when I was dealing with n00bs in CXO I still had a very good chance of getting my problem solved quickly and correctly. My experience with the Costa Ricans is, well, "Not so much."
I suspect that the phone jockeys in CXO were either overqualified for the jobs and/or were angling for a promotion into operations whereas HP doesn't have a data center adjacent to the Costa Rica help desk -- those people are at or near the top of their potential at HP. Furthermore, I have the same suspicions about the 2nd level guys that HP has over in Bangalore.
Can't they get jobs in the casinos or selling tax-free cigs?
No doubt he gets great "uptime".
I refer to the situation where on accepting a contract, a person immediately accepts debt for the equipent or time or services that are provided up-front.
In the US, we called that indentured servitude. The people were generally considered "free" (even the Constitution counted them as free Persons), and the system actually worked well enough that it wasn't really an issue until corporations started abusing their employees with company stores and such that it became a real problem in the US. (While indentured servitude as such was eventually banned, it took unionization to break the company store.)
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
I bet you are.
"If you are a dreamer, a wisher, a liar, A hope-er, a pray-er, a magic bean buyer
Again, the definition of slave is called into question.
When Engineering and Technical colleges sprout on road-sides like grocery stores. Im not exaggerating, the so called engineering colleges in india are a dime a dozen, and the quality is atrocious. Only a few of the 'elite' colleges teach students something, the rest hire (previously) unemployed grads of these same colleges to teach the poor,helpless students. When the professor of a CS class copies the bubble-sort algorithm from the text-book to the black-board, what else do you expect?? And no, it doesnt stop here, the bigger problem is that most of these colleges are run by politicians to mint money. Since almost everyone wants to 'be an engineer' in India, people are willing to pay exorbitant sums to 'secure' a seat in these very 'colleges'. PS: I am fortunate enough to be in a good Institute here in India, but my other friends are rotting in the _other_ colleges.
Studying CS to learn programming is like studying Economics when you want to go into business - economics and business are both about money, after all.
It's funny that you should say it that way, because you'd be surprised by the quantity of job openings whose requirements are a degree in Finance, Business or Economics.
So many in the business world, for good or bad, seem to think of them as functionally interchangeable.
The problem is this: People shop based on price - If company X charged $20 more per monitor than Dell but had 'western' tech support, people would still order from Dell. It's leg legroom on airlines - People claim they want better leg room, but when an airline like AA offered more legroom for a higher ticket price, everyone flew the cheaper airline and crushed themselves in like sardines.
I don't buy the idea that just because somebody has an authoritarian teacher, they are damaged for life. I had some of those, and after a while, you realize that taking their classes is like playing a game. In fact, much of life is about playing games of various sorts.
Anyway, these problems will get fixed over time.
In the first phase, the government tried to control education and set up all the colleges. This didn't come anywhere close to providing the number of colleges needed. Now, private businesses are allowed to set up colleges. This has resulted in a tremendous expansion of educational facilities, but of course, some of the colleges provide a poor education. Soon, we will have a shake-out. In many of the lesser-known colleges, seats even in "hot areas" like computer science are not filled.
Also, in the Indian software industry, we know we cannot take people fresh from school and get them to work. Infosys, for example, sends all fresh graduates to training school for six months before they start working. Every software company in India is heavily involved with schools and colleges to upgrade their teaching levels.
People who don't understand how rapidly India (or China) is changing should come here and take a look.
Oh well, I've moved on to better things and I'm sure you have too - that job was stagnating our skills. Change is good!!!
Since our dollar is only $0.11 shy of being on par with yours, the major bu$ine$$ benefit of outsourcing up north is gone. In 2003 when it was like $0.45 shy of par it was extremely attractive. Damn your president (GWB Jr.) forcing your dollar to plummet.
> Well, duh. They should have taken a programming course.
:(
Sadly in most Indian University systems you don't get to "take" courses. You just study whatever is forced down your throat. Sigh. Time to study
Reading through the comments, I get the feel that India is not alone. China is churning out students every day. Although the problem isn't quite as bad as India through the 10% growth rate, the schooling remains the same. Students are not taught to think. They will ask a question, and receive an answer.
:-)
This problem is truly evident in some juniors I had on board. He was ask me hundreds of questions about 'why wont this work' and I would I would say 'the problem is here, look..' and he'd go 'ahh'. He never 'asked' how to fix it, he just didn't use the initiative to find out why it didn't work, because he has been asking questions and receiving answers.
Now when he asks a question, I ask him to tell me 3 times what he did to try and find out the solution. If he cannot, then I cannot give him an answer. It is working well
I remember an Indian poster telling American IT workers to get a real education so that they can compete when it was the Americans being outsourced. Now it is Indian workers complaining about the same thing. In my response to the Indian poster, I let him know that smarts or willingness to work had nothing to do with their jobs being outsourced. Outsourcing has everything to do with big companies cutting the throats of workers just so that they can generate a few more cents per share in dividends for their stockholders.
When I worked at Sykes Enterprises, I remember the Marianna, Florida employees being told that a new center in the Phillipeans was just a "backup center." To add insult to injury, some team managers from the Marianna facility was sent to the new center to train their future replacements. Within a short period of time after the corporate welfare (excuse me, I meant incentives) ran out, Sykes ran to the Phillipeans. Fortunately for me, I saw what was coming beforehand and managed to get out and was able to find a decent job as a programmer. Unfortunately for most of the others, they were stuck with even lower paying "service" jobs. Ethical behaviour within big corporations is an oxymoron for the most part.
Anybody with average intelligence and an interest in a particular occupation can be taught or trained outside of a school. Unfortunately, it is almost impossible for a prospective employee to get an employer to acknowlege such an education. The only reason that I got the programming job listed above was because the job was at a small business whose owner homeschooled his children. His business was the only one who would even take a glance at my portfolio or would even allow me to show what I could do. It is unfortunate that people must go 10's of thousand of dollars into debt just for a license (college degree) to work. As a matter of fact, when I left my programming job, I had to train my replacement (college educated) so that he could perform my duties.
The point is that people everywhere are smart (and in some cases, just plain stupid) and can learn. The problem with this so called "free trade" system is that it allows big companies to move to countries where the cheap labor plentiful, but it does not allow the labor to move to where decent jobs are plentiful. I have little pity for most big multinational companies when they complain that their patents are being improperly used or when their products are being counterfeited. In fact this counterfeiting and patent infringement make me happy, simply because at the low wages being paid today, it means that people can actually have a chance to partake in the wealth they generate.
Just a few weeks ago there were stories reporting on the shortage of skilled workers available to service India's IT sectors. Has the gap become supersaturated this quickly?
The greater number of "colleges" must, by this reckoning, be very small outfits, most likely private business and technology schools. These would be more comparable to trade schools or "business colleges" (the sort which used to teach shorthand, typing, and basic bookkeeping), than to what most of the world would call a university.
My own six-figure software job was sent to India several months ago. The transition was (typically for this large American-origin company) ineptly handled. I took the initiative to travel to India (and had to argue for it) to give what training I could to my replacements. My principal motivation, of course, was to go see the situation in person, and to do it on luxe business class tickets scammed off the bums who were throwing me out.
I came away reasonably impressed by the curiosity and attitude of the engineers there, but skeptical about their readiness to take on product development in any comprehensive sense. The skepticism comes not from an assessment of basic abilities, but rather from the fact that the specific skill base developed from sustaining support of someone else's work, is not sufficient to allow most engineers to take on independent new product development. I feel that this capability will arrive eventually, but slowly, unless experienced developers return from abroad to bring and spread those specific skills.
For the India operations of the likes of IBM, Microsoft, and Oracle, I would like to imagine that strategic thinking somewhere in the company exists, recognizes this fact, and does something about it. For outsource contract companies, I am less optimistic. I stated this frankly to all who would listen, and noted that what most urgently needs to be outsourced from American companies, is the management.
Alternatively, and better in the long run, will be for local entrepreneurship to arise and to develop products which meet specific local needs.
One form of entrepreneurship which does appear to have arisen, is that of small private schools. In the newspaper, one can find several ads for training in "embedded VxWorks programming". At face value it's an intriguing prospect, but one is left wondering what sort of student goes into one of these programs, and what sort of engineer comes out.
I suspect that the people who I was working with, came out of top- and near-top-tier universities, so I was looking at a very biased sample. I don't see any reason to doubt the facts presented in the NYT article, except to caution that "college" can mean one thing in one place, and quite a different thing in another place.
Keep in mind that India has had a long road toward developing even basic literacy, especially for women. The problems of education in a still-poor country of 1 billion people, go far beyond what this article describes.
It was encouraging to see a greater proportion of women among the engineers in my host company, than I typically see in the U.S. It was also encouraging to see children coming out of poor-looking neighborhoods in the mornings, on their way to school. I realize that I saw only the ones who were going to school, and not those who were not, but it still appeared that people recognized the necessity of an education, and were willing to work and sacrifice to obtain one. Meanwhile, back at home we have ... spinner rims.
I know that atleast 90% of you guys have absolutely no clue what you're talking about in this situation. I worked for an Indian Consultancy Company in China, while having been brought up from USA and went to a US college. The oddity of this is why I uniquely understand what 90% of you don't. It's not that the schools are rigid or they force obedience that's causing the problem. Although they do. The true cause of the problem, as the article lightly points out is they are punished for not being rigid or thinking differently. This is the core of India/China's lack of education. It's not that they have to memorize boring menial stuff, sure we do that in USA too look at a bio major. It's that if they try to memorize it in a unique way or make a game out of the work, they are punished. In fact if they ask a question of why something works the way it does, they are punished. In fact talking at all in class means punishment. This is the crux of the education failure in the east. Japan inclusive, note they're still going through a massive 14 year recession. I would say this instead, be grateful. The only reason you still have jobs and can feed your children is because their education system is so awful. If they ever did catch up, you're too expensive and you're over valued. You can complain all you want about your "American Education" but the reality is the freedom to talk and share information is what this "American Education" is all about, and this and this alone allows you to keep your jobs.
I dd a sort of general engineering course, with a mechanical bent, at a very spiffy uni.
At said uni the electricals and the rest of us did almost identical first year content, and our second year content still had about 50% overlap.
One thing that made me laugh as I cursed the difficulty of understanding power electrics (eg why is power=v.I') was the thought that some poor electronics geek was attempting to understand the thermodynamics of steam engines at the same time.
In my career I have used concepts from many of the papers I took, and last month I just got to use triple products for the first time, in anger. That's 22 years after leaving uni.
I'm betting most were specced by engineers. With real engineering degrees. Not software 'engineers'.
You may appreciate this op=-ed piece from the president of the west virginia board of education...
There's an annoying type of posting, usually labelled "Gimme code" or "Do my work for me". Judging from the name of the posters, most of these are from India, and usually demonstrate a lack of even the most elemental C and assembly programming skills, and the inability to find/read/understand technical documents and datasheets. They also look like the posters are already working on industrial-level projects without having any clue on how to tackle the problems they face, or what's possible or impossible with the hardware they intend to use.
"What the market wants and what the school provides are totally different" That reminds me of my own education somehow. Lets see, of 128 required credits, less than half were engineering related. Somehow, I doubt my employer cares about all those humanities.
I am Indian about to complete my CS degree. The Indian education system is one big mess. The criteria for evaluation of students is really simple The more slave like qualities you have, the more likely you are to 'succeed'. I saw a lot of comments saying Indian grads lack of judgement and free thinking, this exactly is the reason. You are punished for being different.
<rant> I never wanted to go to college but you simply can't find a job in IT without having a degree(Since I couldn't do well in a 3 hour exam I couldn't get into a better college). I spent most of my time in college learning stuff I liked and never memorized anything resulted in having a less than average score in my degree which disqualifies from appearing in most interviews. It doesn't matter I know more computer languages or have worked on some useful projects or did great at internship or worked in diverse environments unlike my competitors, what matters is I am simply not eligible. </rant>
But I believe it is not the education system that's at fault. The IT industry (In India) does not need people with good skills, they want slaves and the education system is just providing that.
..the mistakes in my post are due to typing this message while writing something else at the same time.
HA HA i just have to laugh at people that waste there time with colleges and universities
Then moan when they figure out they have received a poor education from a bunch of two bit teachers, that are paid less than a floor cleaner with a crack addiction.
Give up on the dream, grow a backbone and have civil revolution, or pay more for your education eg (private).
Yeah but those people have been dead for over 350 years, I think we can broaden the term.
1) 350 years ? Nope. Read up on history; it wasn't 1656.
2) Slavery never ended. In the US it may have, but slavery as a worldwide phenomenon fitting the GP description never ended.
Religion is what happens when nature strikes and groupthink goes wrong.
Take largely uneducated population
:P How on earth do you filter all that out to find the few qualified people?
Shove them through an 'IT' education
Get high quality programmers?
I don't think so.
There are some really smart people in India and China, but there's not enough of them to take over the market. There's not enough here in Canada or the USA to say the least. Design is really is one of those areas that will be spread around the world and cannot be 'globalized'.
Just imagine trying to hire someone in India.
You know the system is corrupt and people can get through school just by knowing people and cheating rampant.
IT is seen as a means out of poverty. You get 25 million applications
How do you rapidly build an IT capable work force? Many of whom have not had a proper basic education.
Centers of technology (Silicon Valley, Ottawa...) will NEVER be able to be self sustaining. They will always need to IMPORT or cease being a super-centre, and spread to other regions. Every region only producers a certain number of truly capable people in each field.
Sometimes it is simply better to do things on your own rather than rely on your educational institution. Secondly, if they're expecting to be hand held and be taught databases, software engineering, etc. than they are barking up the wrong tree.
Where I went to school, we had to implement algorithms in a language of our choice. He didn't hand hold us and teach us a language. It was either your learned it by yourself or simple you sucked!
Simply put, if they want to learn, sometimes it is best to do it on their own.
Du bin ein Imbecile d00d...
Yakum Purkan min Shemaya
Maybe a generation of American engineers will have a place in the marketplace after all.
I'm an Indian student, and I'm currently doing my B.E. in Comp. Engg. over here Pune, Maharashtra.
IMHO, the linked article is a gross oversimplification of what is a very complex system.
Colleges and universities can be broadly divided into three and two categories each, respectively. Colleges can be either good, bad, or mediocre. Universities are generally good or not good.
I'm not counting the IITs and IIMs because they are such an insignificant part of the whole, and therefore not very relevant (except as role models) when evaluating the education scenario in India as a whole.
At the the top we have good colleges affiliated to a good university. These people are the first tier, and most of them are the creme of the crop when it comes to education. They are usually snapped up by campus recruiters, and command the highest opening salaries.
Next we have the mediocre college affiliated to a good university. In these, the good students make it to the top and are treated as well as a student from a good college by prospective employers. The not so good students have a tough time of it.
Next we have the (extremely rare) good college affiliated to a mediocre university. They are only a bit below the above.
Next we have the bad college affiliated to a mediocre university. The career prospects of someone going here are not too bright.
Next we have the bad college, bad university combo. Pretty much give up hope of a decent career if you are one of these unlucky people.
Good universities can make up for many flaws of a college thanks to the innate potential of the syllabus and affiliation requirements.
I myself attend a mediocre college affiliated to a good university.
One notable thing about the education system for engineering in India is that the first year is common to people of all disciplines.
In the first semester, we study:
Basic Electrical Engineering
Basic Mechanical Engineering
Basic Civil Engineering
Applied Math. I
Applied Science I
In the second semester, it is
Basic Electronic Engineering
Engineering Graphics
Engineering Mechanics
Applied Science II
Applied Mathematics II
A lot of the material in these courses is useless, even though it may be necessary to produce a person who has a basic grasp of all engineering disciplines. This system needs an overhaul, IMO.
It is from the second year that the fun really starts. And at least in our college and university, and all colleges affiliated to our university, in the beginning we study pure theory, with programming only as an add-on practical. Only once a solid theoretical foundation has been built is actual programming teaching started. The University of Pune is a venerable institution, and not a Java-school.
I have come to this conclusion looking at the syllabus for the second and subsequent years of study.
Maybe I'm seeing only part of the reality, however, because the education system of Maharashtra is quite a bit better than that of other states.
I seriously doubt that the person who wrote that article knows how complex the system is internally.
I don't buy it.
I went to college, and I'm out in the work force and have been for 8 years. I had a bit of help in college - I was a intern at a major automaker while I was in school. I had a pretty good idea of what I wanted to do (mechanical engineering). That's what this comes down to.
Most, if not all colleges, offer excellent classes on par with trade schools, if you know what you want to be.
Most college students DON'T know what they "want to be". Most take the standard fare college curriculum for any given major. There is no way for a college to prepare a student if the student can't at least tell me what he's aiming to get. Most simply pick the courses based on what is recommended for the general field, what their friends are taking, or what is easiest.
For those going to work in manufacturing, it's a no brainer that they should be spending time in the metal shops - CNC machining, some light automation, that sort of thing. If you're going to be on the design shop, a heavy dose of autocad will get you in just about any door. But if you take the "standard fare", you're going to be lost.
It's a pretty standard law around where I work that incoming folks will NOT be very useful for 1-2 years after they higher in. We hire from some of the best - U of M, Purdue, MIT, Harvard, Stanford. They simply don't have the general skills.
No one can tell me the colleges don't offer them either - I look back and know I made quite a few mistakes in choosing classes. Why did I take that second thermo course rather than introduction to automation? Why did I take that communications (oral) course rather than introcution to AC power and drive systems?
The courses were there - I simply didn't know what I should be taking: for the most part. Our college DID require some very worthwhile courses. Instead of a thesis as a senior, we had actual companies come in and we spent a full semester quoting, designing, purchasing, and solving their actual problems.
No... I don't think you can blame much of this on the colleges in the US. Much more so on students without a clear direction.
I don't why Infosys is getting so uppity, even a 12 standard can do the jobs they require with training, what exactly are these 25000 people going to be doing, is there anything remotely challenging, nope thats another 25000 drones in an industry allergic to innovation. So why does Infosys need bright people again? The only purpose the degrees serve is to inflate the per hour rates. Beyond that you don't need those skills because the jobs offered across the board in IT in india with very few excepptions are dull and repititive. The IT industry has been complaining about the lack of quality people for the last 15 years, what steps have they taken to address it, and do they provide quality jobs? This is mere whining with no constructive purpose. Over 90% of IT engineers in India are frustrated, there is little room for independent thinking in their jobs, little scope for job satsifaction, no room for growth and learning. It's the same thing over and over again, just so that mediocre companies like Infosys can can pass off wage arbitrage as some imagined global revolution.
The problem in India is not that colleges don't impart trade skills. The problem is that many of them fail to impart ANY skills at all. Considering that I just finished the college routine in India, here are some of the reasons IMO:
1) Low investment in education:
India's investment in higher education has been abysmally low for years. As a result, many colleges have shockingly poor infrastructure. Students work on poorly maintained, ancient equipment if at all.
2) Low quality of teachers:
This is a very important factor for poor education in India. Teachers and professors even at the graduate level are paid a pittance. Many teachers are taken on as temps to get around prescribed pay-scales and reservations. Coupled with the fact that there is very little research undertaken at most of India's colleges, there is simply no incentive for quality people to enter the teaching profession.
In the I-T industry, for example, even a fresh engineer can expect salaries of atleast INR20,000 pm. A teacher would need decades of experience to reach that salary level. There is simply no comparison between Industry and the 'Academia' in payscales.
>from the firm-handshake-and-accentless-English dept.
If you do not speak American English, you have an "accent"
Hell, people from England -the birth place of English- have British "accent"!
Canadian English is also funny for Uncle Sam.
Will you quit complaining about the accent and just accept English is spoken around the world with unique accent?(including American accent)
I'm actually not too bad at it, it just rarely comes up, never ever at work.
It comes up a lot more often at home when I'm inventing some new algorithm, but that's not exactly something that is common.
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
The analogy breaks down because if it were true most of the ads for car mechanic jobs would say "advanced degree in physics required".
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
I was forced to take many useless math classes. Multivariable calc was just the one that stuck out as pretty useless.
If you want to learn skills which will allow you to get an entry-level programming job today, go to the trade school.
I didn't want or need to learn anything. I didn't go to school to learn, I went to school because I felt like I had to. I can learn by reading the Internet.
I dropped out after a few years, I've got 6 years of professional programming experience now. I do wish I hadn't wasted those years in school.
Your major assumption is that university is useful. That assumption is incorrect. Universities only exist to stroke the egos of the professors, and provide them a place to dick around and get paid for doing it.
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
if the employment state in india is bad, I welcome them to come here! it's a way better solution than outsourcing our jobs there. let them come here, and apply for citizenship, get visas, and get some jobs! bring your whole family if you can. this way you can all do the same, and keep the money here to help boost our economy. the only trouble with high immigration is if the influx of immigrants we get are poorly educated. As I understand it, in India, most college educated folks can speak a form of british english, have studied pretty extensively, and could provide some skilled labor and technical and managerial experience of value to our economy.
I will say however, if immigrants wish to come here, they should learn to speak good english if they cannot already. How can you possibly expect to get by in a new country without understanding and at least being mostly-fluent in the common language?
I think we should welcome all who wish to come here to work, and we should provide the language training and efficient immigration procedures to make it work. but as with all of us, there should never be a free ride. no welfare, no SSI, no free lunch unless you have already lived and worked in the USA as a citizen for a good period of time. maybe make it work like how you get "vested" for your 401K yknow? as long as people are coming to _WORK_ i think it's a good thing.
sometimes, i wonder if i'm the only conservative on teh intarweb. ah well, back to mah hogs and warmongerin'....
To have a university undergrad degree assumes a certain set of skills across the curriculum--the ability write correctly, the use of critical thinking skills, as well as a basic understanding of the sciences, the arts, math, literature, language, etc.
Remember when that's what a High School diploma was supposed to mean?
Do not fold, spindle or mutilate.
Got me curious, what is the specific product you are talking about ?
http://rareformnewmedia.com/
... und Ich heisse Franz. Jawohl... Franz! Nein, nicht Rajeef... Franz!
(the parent basically wrote, "You 'am' an imbecile d00d...". The humorous addendum above adds a claim that the guy's name is 'Franz', not 'Rajeef')
Something I have learned from working first hand with Indians - the head shake and head nod can have many different meanings depending on the context. It's not unusual for one of my co-workers to vigorously shake his head, something Americans recognize as 'no', when in perfect agreement with what is being said. Likewise, a nod - which typically means 'yes' - may be no more than an acknowledgement that you are being heard with no bearing on agreement or understanding. My absolute favorite is the sideways nod, combining both a head shake and a nod into a fluid, circular motion.
I have learned to ask for more than just a simple acknowledgement when giving direction. Asking to have instructions repeated back to me tends to have much better results in the end rather than just accepting a nod or a quietly whispered 'Yes yes'.
This isn't just for the Indians, though. There are plenty of native speakers with only a marginal grasp of the English language that somehow manage to acquire degrees and credentials far above their actual credentials.
Give a man a beer and he wastes an hour. Teach a man to brew and he wastes a lifetime.
Except the people collecting the interest.
Dammit, can't you people read the entire post? Go back and read _everything_. I already mentioned the continuation of slavery or indentured servitude as an ongoing global phenomenon.
I agree to most of you who said College is not a training center for job.
..etc in the market at that time, but also learned how compilers are developed, languages work and basics of many more subjects like operations research, AI, and a lot of other that I cant remember. So today, its a matter of learning syntax and framework, and I can program in most language. I think I did well in AS400, VB, Java, HTML so far in my 10year carreer. That shows 10yr back the (so called professional) colleges were doing ok. I dont know about today. But I don't think it can got from good to bad.
I did my BS in physics (in my own interest) and then masters in Software Applications in India. During masters, I learned most of the languages, SQL
May be they are struggling to match up with the industry with the same old teachers who may not be interested in learning new stuff.
Without my masters and only with BS what could have I done? Exactly not sure... I can get a bank job(that pays well in India unlike in US). Could have got into teaching. Or any government job. Yes, all these require training after I got the job! And thats what I see in US too.
I have my cousin who did all his studies upto BS in US. Yes in CS. He can't even do a simple program. Amazed on this situation, contradictory to my expectation, I checked what he learned. He learned almost everything what I thought he needs to do his work. BAsed on what he said and the from what I know of the subject name. He is no better than I was after my BS.
Industry requires readymade workers. Well, that is not exactly most college curriculum are designed. Some companies are working with the professional / trade colleges to accomodate what they want. Thats just a small % of the total colleges. So there is a demand-supply issue.
My dell laptop's power brick recently failed. Knowing what a disaster calling india on the phone would be, I went on line and submitted a ticket. I wrote in clear easy grammar and sentences about what had happened, what the symptoms were, what lights I saw and the laptop charged/showed a connection when docked. About 2 hours later the tech updated the ticket with "part(s) sent" and I had a new brick the next day.
second that.
Also, IITs teachers are mostly three types.
* ones who are enthusiastic, and have usually furthered their education outside India (usually IIT alumni)
* ones who had their education within India, and are quite enthusiastic and in touch with everythign.
* ones who are got in through internal promotions and are not good.
What IITs have is a teacher-evaluation (anonymous and confidential) by students. Students generally rank the first two types high, and often screw the last. Consequently, they are not given promotions, and usually end up leaving fo othe ropoprtunities. This keeps the faculty too somewhat toned.
fellow IITM alumni, mandak
On the other hand, it's very hard to read code if you can't write it. It's only after you write your own for awhile that you can really start to be able to read it, especially when you're looking for flaws in the code.
I read the internet for the articles.
Normally, I am not a grammar Nazi but in this case, it's relevant:
Most common reason for summarily tossing a resume in the trash: spelling or grammatical errors. I realize that an online forum post is an OK place to make errors, but you'd best get somebody to proof your resume.Or your modesty.No wonder you're having such difficulty selling your own time, then.Again, it's not them, it's you.
Fix your resume, polish your interviewing skills, and go sell yourself. Looking for work is hard, but I bet you have a pretty strong motivation: the desire to never wash another floor again for the rest of your life.
Good luck!
They don't grade fathers, but if your daughter's a stripper, you fucked up. --Chris Rock
Good Idea. Also you had going in your favor the fact that you were well on script if the brick came with the laptop.
if vegetarians eat vegetables why are cannibals not humanitarians.
I did my undergrad in engineering in India and did my Masters degree in the US and I worked in the engineering and IT fields. I certainly agree that there is more freedom to express ideas and flexibility in the learning process in the US, but it is far from what it needs to be. I had professors in my Masters degree program that would give Cs and Ds for students who did not use the specified font in the assignments and reports. There were many professors who absolutely did not encourage any questions in the class. My Masters degree was not very helpful in my engineering job either. We were taught design using software that the industry had long abandoned.
One thing the education system gives, both in India and in the US, is some good exercise for the brain to analyze, comprehend and solve problems in different domains.Man, did I ever screw up. Thanks for your insightful comments!
They don't grade fathers, but if your daughter's a stripper, you fucked up. --Chris Rock
What would they have done if you had just immediately punted stuff not on the script to tier 2? I.e., if you had said something like "you're problem isn't on the script that I'm not allowed to deviate from, so even though I could help you myself please hold for my supervisor?"
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
It is important to be able to take notes, and always writing in full sentences is too slow for note-taking.
There is no comparison between US college education and the middle-tier Indian colleges being discussed.
Have you walked into a state school? The lecturer lectures, the students learn to take notes, and there is little discussion or debate. Hard to do those things in large classes taught by TAs.
Lies about crimes
Its extremely stupid to stereotype people based on their nationality. I have lived in the US for the last 15 years, but am originally from India. I write code for a living and have worked with tonnes of good and bad programmers. I have learnt that nationality and place of origin dont matter. I have seen dumb and smart people from the same country, same schools and colleges. I know of amazingly bright programmers from India, and know of a few dumb-asses from the IITs. It all depends on the person's attitude. Many folks want to sincerely do a good job. They work hard on their skills and improve all the time. Then there are those haughty idiots, who think they are god's gift to mankind. School and country-of-origin dont matter. India has a huge population and because of the biased sample size, you are bound to find all kinds of people. I used to work for a fortune 100 company which had a support center based in India, and have often seen support folks from India getting awards and letters of appreciation from customers in the US. Yep, the telemarketters who call from India during the wrong time of the day, piss me off no end, but that doesnt mean that they are dumb people. I have worked for tonnes of American PHBs with pea brains. I guess the /.ers who complain and stereotype are either biased or have no exposure to the world.
Very detailed and articulate response.
Are you sure you are studying in India? The NY Times article says that you are supposed to have very poor communication skills and who just memorizes things without understanding them.
I hope the idiots who think they know the whole education system in India read and can understand this.
The OS/2 support line was a mixed bag like anywhere else, but IBM had the highest customer satisfaction rating in the industry for their technical support of the product. Then they started trying to cut costs and the job got significantly less fun and the customers got significantly more pissed off. I guess that's a common theme in the industry.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
So because they're in a crappy situation it's slavery? Slavery means that they are literally OWNED by another person. That they don't even have the choice to leave and starve for sure.
Saying just because their situation sucks it's "slavery" is like saying that because apples taste sweet we're gonna start calling them oranges because they're sweet too. And calling them Orange 2.0 or "Oranges of the 21st century" don't make it anything other than an apple.
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
Long before outsourcing came to this level, in early 1998 (or late 1997) I had the exact same experience with Dell.
:-)
PC under warranty, hard disk makes clanking noises, you *know* what that means.
But the Dell tech had me go through all kinds of BIOS settings and repeated attempts to boot, lasting almost an hour (not counting the hold time of course) before he agreed the hard disk was damaged beyond repair and would order a replacement sent out.
This in spite of me putting the phone mouthpiece next to the hard disk and letting him *hear* the noise, and he agreed it *sounds* like a head crash, but he has to go through the script.
I'm an Indian, only too acutely aware of the problems in the Indian system, but in this case it's the employer who made the rules. I'm sure that's still true, maybe even more so.
Sitaram
PS:
And all through, my biggest concern was: please God let me not slip and tell him I'm running Linux, because I *know* damn well and good he will tell me to reinstall Windows and call back