7 ms·

An important, but tangential point to note is that unlike the US, college education in India does not allow for a student to independently chose his/her major.

by bdhe 16y ago

An important, but tangential point to note is that unlike the US, college education in India does not allow for a student to independently chose his/her major. People join colleges already deciding (without taking a single course) what they plan to get a degree in. This leads to two things: 1. Most people do not have a clue about their interests and passion until it is too late (or never!). 2. The only majors that people graduate with are those that seem to have a lot of jobs and "prestige in society", often due to peer and parental pressure more than their own volition. This explains why there are so many engineers and doctors. Combining these two, it is not surprising that a lot of graduates are not passionate about their work but see it as a means to an end.

mquander 16y ago
As someone who knows nothing about the Indian education system, can you clarify? Do Indian children have their major chosen for them via parents, tests, or administrators? Or do they decide on their own focus, but prior to college? I would also offer that the article isn't complaining that graduates are not passionate about their work; it's complaining that they appear to have taken very little away from their education at all. Having less volition intuitively explains a lack of passion, but I'm not convinced that it does a great job explaining a lack of competence -- passion can be replaced by discipline and social pressure. I find the article's description of problems with teaching, school culture, and school curricula to be more obviously plausible.
- w1ntermute 16y ago
  > Do Indian children have their major chosen for them via parents, tests, or administrators? Parents. Their future job is usually decided for them before they're even born. The number of people who go into a particular profession because they enjoy it is exceedingly small.
  - bdhe 16y ago
    > Parents. Their future job is usually decided for them before they're even born. This is patently untrue. Parents usually have high expectations of stable, well-earning jobs, but in no way decide before they are even born. It might apply to the minority of businessmen who insist that their children carry on the "family business", but even that is rare.
  - movingahead 16y ago
    As J K Rowling puts it brilliantly, there is an expiry date on how long you can keep blaming your parents for everything that goes wrong. http://www.ted.com/talks/jk_rowling_the_fringe_benefits_of_failure.html http://www.ted.com/talks/jk_rowling_the_fringe_benefits_of_f... We lack a culture where hacking and playing around with things is encouraged.
    - sparkymat 16y ago
      I agree. A lot of blame lies with the educational system which promotes rote learning and at times, even penalizes thinking out of the box.
- shriphani 16y ago
  They typically take a test. The choice of majors is pretty broad for those who place first. They end up taking CS, EE and other popular majors. Those who placed in the 2000+ ranks get to pick from an increasingly smaller pool. By the time they get to assigning spots for those who placed 5000 and above, you are probably left with textiles, metallurgy and some other arcane fields.
- bdhe 16y ago
  > Having less volition intuitively explains a lack of passion, but I'm not convinced that it does a great job explaining a lack of competence -- passion can be replaced by discipline and social pressure. Yes, my point was that it would be of note for people discussing the Indian education system to keep in mind the way people go about choosing their subjects. I didn't say that it was the primary cause or even directly contributing to the lack of competence.
- adhipg 16y ago
  As stated above, most colleges in India do not allow you to pick subjects and customize your course. Thus, all you chose is a 'major' (the degree) and the rest (the subjects and curriculum) has been chosen for you by the college. Most of the times a student's major is selected for him/her with the following preference: 1. What's available in the most reputed college nearby. 2. What the parents perceive to be the best degree to pursue (usually engineers/doctors followed by other streams based on the general consensus of their friends/peers/relatives). Children almost never decide their own focus - at least they never did say about ten years ago. Children here make the first choice of their courses to study in High School when they are 16. That's almost too young to decide what you want to be. You can be certain that almost every Indian student who took Biology in their High School tried to be a doctor and every student who had Maths and Physics took the exams for entrance to Engineering colleges. That's why we see Indian engineers have a very skewed quality to quantity ratio - many of them never wanted to be engineers in the first place! This can mostly be attributed to our parents growing up in an (almost) socialist republic where doctors and engineers were the best career avenues after the government. However, things are changing slowly and parents are being very liberal with the career choices of their kids and getting them to explore different options.
  - JonnieCache 16y ago
    >As stated above, most colleges in India do not allow you to pick subjects and customize your course. Thus, all you chose is a 'major' (the degree) and the rest (the subjects and curriculum) has been chosen for you by the college. >Children here make the first choice of their courses to study in High School when they are 16. That's almost too young to decide what you want to be. This is exactly the same as in britain. India inherited most of it's bureaucracy from britain.
    - metageek 16y ago
      But was it that way in Britain before India became independent in 1947? I thought the British "slot everybody into a job" system was part of post-WWII socialism.
- sid6376 16y ago
  Parents choose based on what they think is the safest option for their kids. To put the blame entirely on them will not be fair. One of the most interesting things I find about the American way of life is, people start taking up jobs from a very young age. IMO this helps them explore options and also discover their own interests and even aptitude for a particular line of work. Also in the Indian way of life hobbies always come second to academics.
  - sparkymat 16y ago
    Nowadays, more and more Indian parents seem to be receptive of "unconventional" career choices. Not saying that it's common, or that most don't push their kids towards engineering/medicine, but the situation seems to have improved over the last decade or two. However, you still hear tragic tales of kids who were forced into a field in which they hold no interest.
grannyg00se 16y ago
"An important, but tangential point to note is that unlike the US, ...People join colleges already deciding (without taking a single course) what they plan to get a degree in." Isn't that how it works in the US as well? Don't students join colleges already deciding what they plan to get a degree in? I'm from Canada. When we apply to university we have to apply to a specific degree. First year courses are already tailored to a particular degree path. If that's not the case in the US, when is it that you actually choose your degree? I always hated the notion that 18 year old people coming out of high school are expected to know what course they want to target for the next four years.
- sudont 16y ago
  No, at least not if the academic advisor knows anything. I was pushed into generals and certain key classes to get an introduction to my major and it's fit. In smaller US high schools there are vocational training paths, however it was limited to welding and nursing where I came from. There's supposed to be the tradition of "Liberal Arts" in the system, where a general academic background is impressed before any specific training. Because of this, there's more fluidity (not in any traditionally siloed discipline, like medicine) in the US university system, see: the cliché about the 6 year student who changed their major after three years. Most of the structure comes from parental and academic pressure to buckle down and really dedicate to the subject.
- fryguy 16y ago
  It's not necessarily true. There are a lot of people that take mainly "general education" classes that are required to graduate during the first two years, or alternatively get an associates degree first. Also, given that you're not in a particularly demanding major (like the max-unit engineering degrees) and have a lot of electives, you're not out a lot of work by changing majors within your first two years. Most majors don't have chaining dependencies that take the full four years to complete. For my degree, there was a set of 8 classes that were required to become an upper-division student that only had a 3 semester-deep dependency chain (let's use a computer -> object oriented programming -> abstract data types), and then upper division had around 8-10 classes, and there was only a 3 semester-deep chain (data structures -> processor design -> operating systems). The number of classes you can take per semester is the limiting factor. Also, considering that people are working jobs and going to school at the same time, four year degrees sometimes take longer. It's pretty common for the challenging engineering degrees to take 5 years due to the sheer number of units required to graduate (I took 6 years, without switching, although I did get a double major in math & computer science).

by bdhe 16y ago

mquander 16y ago

As someone who knows nothing about the Indian education system, can you clarify? Do Indian children have their major chosen for them via parents, tests, or administrators? Or do they decide on their own focus, but prior to college? I would also offer that the article isn't complaining that graduates are not passionate about their work; it's complaining that they appear to have taken very little away from their education at all. Having less volition intuitively explains a lack of passion, but I'm not convinced that it does a great job explaining a lack of competence -- passion can be replaced by discipline and social pressure. I find the article's description of problems with teaching, school culture, and school curricula to be more obviously plausible.

w1ntermute 16y ago
> Do Indian children have their major chosen for them via parents, tests, or administrators? Parents. Their future job is usually decided for them before they're even born. The number of people who go into a particular profession because they enjoy it is exceedingly small.
- bdhe 16y ago
  > Parents. Their future job is usually decided for them before they're even born. This is patently untrue. Parents usually have high expectations of stable, well-earning jobs, but in no way decide before they are even born. It might apply to the minority of businessmen who insist that their children carry on the "family business", but even that is rare.
- movingahead 16y ago
  As J K Rowling puts it brilliantly, there is an expiry date on how long you can keep blaming your parents for everything that goes wrong. http://www.ted.com/talks/jk_rowling_the_fringe_benefits_of_failure.html http://www.ted.com/talks/jk_rowling_the_fringe_benefits_of_f... We lack a culture where hacking and playing around with things is encouraged.
  - sparkymat 16y ago
    I agree. A lot of blame lies with the educational system which promotes rote learning and at times, even penalizes thinking out of the box.
shriphani 16y ago
They typically take a test. The choice of majors is pretty broad for those who place first. They end up taking CS, EE and other popular majors. Those who placed in the 2000+ ranks get to pick from an increasingly smaller pool. By the time they get to assigning spots for those who placed 5000 and above, you are probably left with textiles, metallurgy and some other arcane fields.
bdhe 16y ago
> Having less volition intuitively explains a lack of passion, but I'm not convinced that it does a great job explaining a lack of competence -- passion can be replaced by discipline and social pressure. Yes, my point was that it would be of note for people discussing the Indian education system to keep in mind the way people go about choosing their subjects. I didn't say that it was the primary cause or even directly contributing to the lack of competence.
adhipg 16y ago
As stated above, most colleges in India do not allow you to pick subjects and customize your course. Thus, all you chose is a 'major' (the degree) and the rest (the subjects and curriculum) has been chosen for you by the college. Most of the times a student's major is selected for him/her with the following preference: 1. What's available in the most reputed college nearby. 2. What the parents perceive to be the best degree to pursue (usually engineers/doctors followed by other streams based on the general consensus of their friends/peers/relatives). Children almost never decide their own focus - at least they never did say about ten years ago. Children here make the first choice of their courses to study in High School when they are 16. That's almost too young to decide what you want to be. You can be certain that almost every Indian student who took Biology in their High School tried to be a doctor and every student who had Maths and Physics took the exams for entrance to Engineering colleges. That's why we see Indian engineers have a very skewed quality to quantity ratio - many of them never wanted to be engineers in the first place! This can mostly be attributed to our parents growing up in an (almost) socialist republic where doctors and engineers were the best career avenues after the government. However, things are changing slowly and parents are being very liberal with the career choices of their kids and getting them to explore different options.
- JonnieCache 16y ago
  >As stated above, most colleges in India do not allow you to pick subjects and customize your course. Thus, all you chose is a 'major' (the degree) and the rest (the subjects and curriculum) has been chosen for you by the college. >Children here make the first choice of their courses to study in High School when they are 16. That's almost too young to decide what you want to be. This is exactly the same as in britain. India inherited most of it's bureaucracy from britain.
  - metageek 16y ago
    But was it that way in Britain before India became independent in 1947? I thought the British "slot everybody into a job" system was part of post-WWII socialism.
sid6376 16y ago
Parents choose based on what they think is the safest option for their kids. To put the blame entirely on them will not be fair. One of the most interesting things I find about the American way of life is, people start taking up jobs from a very young age. IMO this helps them explore options and also discover their own interests and even aptitude for a particular line of work. Also in the Indian way of life hobbies always come second to academics.
- sparkymat 16y ago
  Nowadays, more and more Indian parents seem to be receptive of "unconventional" career choices. Not saying that it's common, or that most don't push their kids towards engineering/medicine, but the situation seems to have improved over the last decade or two. However, you still hear tragic tales of kids who were forced into a field in which they hold no interest.

grannyg00se 16y ago

"An important, but tangential point to note is that unlike the US, ...People join colleges already deciding (without taking a single course) what they plan to get a degree in." Isn't that how it works in the US as well? Don't students join colleges already deciding what they plan to get a degree in? I'm from Canada. When we apply to university we have to apply to a specific degree. First year courses are already tailored to a particular degree path. If that's not the case in the US, when is it that you actually choose your degree? I always hated the notion that 18 year old people coming out of high school are expected to know what course they want to target for the next four years.

sudont 16y ago
No, at least not if the academic advisor knows anything. I was pushed into generals and certain key classes to get an introduction to my major and it's fit. In smaller US high schools there are vocational training paths, however it was limited to welding and nursing where I came from. There's supposed to be the tradition of "Liberal Arts" in the system, where a general academic background is impressed before any specific training. Because of this, there's more fluidity (not in any traditionally siloed discipline, like medicine) in the US university system, see: the cliché about the 6 year student who changed their major after three years. Most of the structure comes from parental and academic pressure to buckle down and really dedicate to the subject.
fryguy 16y ago
It's not necessarily true. There are a lot of people that take mainly "general education" classes that are required to graduate during the first two years, or alternatively get an associates degree first. Also, given that you're not in a particularly demanding major (like the max-unit engineering degrees) and have a lot of electives, you're not out a lot of work by changing majors within your first two years. Most majors don't have chaining dependencies that take the full four years to complete. For my degree, there was a set of 8 classes that were required to become an upper-division student that only had a 3 semester-deep dependency chain (let's use a computer -> object oriented programming -> abstract data types), and then upper division had around 8-10 classes, and there was only a 3 semester-deep chain (data structures -> processor design -> operating systems). The number of classes you can take per semester is the limiting factor. Also, considering that people are working jobs and going to school at the same time, four year degrees sometimes take longer. It's pretty common for the challenging engineering degrees to take 5 years due to the sheer number of units required to graduate (I took 6 years, without switching, although I did get a double major in math & computer science).