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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.'"
Exactly. I would gladly hire 10 indian workers at $10-20/day (which I've been told isn't a bad salary in many parts of India) if they had even a small degree of any computer related skills. Wouldn't even need to be coding. And I'm not talking about offshoring work that would be done by Americans, I'm talking about adding new areas to my business that I couldn't possibly provide if I were to use American labor. This would be a win-win for everyone, since it would provide additional revenue that I could use to hire highly skilled American workers for other new markets I'd like to enter.
... or that these people have skills that are basically worthless overseas. I'd probably vote for the latter, as everything I'm hearing nowadays claims that highly skilled IT workers in India are in very short supply, and demanding ridiculous (for India) salaries.
The problem is that it's difficult for non-Indian employers to connect with these unemployed individuals
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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.
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.
How is this different than a degree in English in the US?
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.