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Two things: 1. This is incredibly anecdotal, but the half a dozen people I know who have come from Indian educational backgrounds (specifically IT programs) d

by jmduke 13y ago

Two things: 1. This is incredibly anecdotal, but the half a dozen people I know who have come from Indian educational backgrounds (specifically IT programs) did not have much to show with their diplomas. These are all incredibly bright people who seemed to start out levels behind their otherwise peers, and often rely (as we all do) on online material to make up for gaping flaws in their knowledge. From the source article: Hiring is slowing down because recruiters are changing their strategy. "An engineering degree is a poor proxy for your education and employment skills," says Manish Sabharwal, chairman of TeamLease, a temp staffing firm. "The world of work is evolving... employers increasingly don't care what you know, they focus on what you can do with that knowledge." While dozens of new institutes have been established in the past six or eight years, he claims that over a third of them are empty and perhaps they are "worth more dead (for the real estate they sit on) than alive." This suggests to me that many Indian STEM degrees are not an adequate proxy for value (just the same as many American STEM degrees.) 2. I wish decentralized certification systems became a bigger thing. Personally, I would love to be able to take a definitive test on whether or not I knew Python well enough to spend forty hours a week working in Python. Make it open notes and timed, like the real world is. I know this used to be a big thing in the 90's, but that was before my time -- why did this go out of style? Did the rapid advancement and evolution of the industry prove the system prohibitively time/effort-consuming?

eshvk 13y ago
> 2. I wish decentralized certification systems became a bigger thing. Personally, I would love to be able to take a definitive test on whether or not I knew Python well enough to spend forty hours a week working in Python. Make it open notes and timed, like the real world is. I know this used to be a big thing in the 90's, but that was before my time -- why did this go out of style? Did the rapid advancement and evolution of the industry prove the system prohibitively time/effort-consuming? The problem is when you have enough desperate unethical people to break any system of testing that you can throw at them. During my undergrad, there were books that were filled with possible questions that could come up in the statewide exams. One was supposed to memorize the answers (given in the book) and write the same answer in the exams. I remember when I wrote my GRE, there were people constructing a database of all the possible questions that showed up in a particular month of the GRE. Every system is breakable; your decentralized certification system will make it only easier for a bunch of people who don't know shit but have shiny new certificates to show up.
- kamaal 13y ago
  Well said. >>people constructing a database of all the possible questions that showed up in a particular month of the GRE. Every system is breakable But on similar line something similar happens in the industry too. Look at interviewing. There exists of a database of interview questions that you need to learn to game the interview. To an extent programming in itself is largely that. Cook books, google search solutions. Heck bulk of programming is organizing a database of solution patterns to most commonly known problem patterns.
  - eshvk 13y ago
    > Look at interviewing. There exists of a database of interview questions that you need to learn to game the interview. That is part of the reason that I have become tired of the tech industry; its job application process is silly. There is enough correlation and causation issues. As an interviewer, you assume that a lifestyle, schools, ability to solve a bunch of textbook algo problems means that the person will be a good employee; as an interviewee, you assume that a company which asks such questions, talks about exotic languages, technologies, provides free lunches and other crap will be the good fit for you. I have decided I am going to ask companies if I can work for x time for them on a project; then we can figure out in practice whether we are both good fits and then decide on a final settlement. Of course, this will never become widespread because it fucks with the H1B system and a lot of people are still convinced that the way tech interviews happen is the right way.
jey 13y ago
It seems that most Indians who are knowledgeable and well-educated got that way despite the educational system, not because of it. Sure, a tiny proportion of elite students have access to high-quality education, but everyone else seems to be shoved through absolutely awful courses. The worst example I've seen of this is that until 12th grade, Indian tests consist solely of reproducing memorized material! I mean this literally: you actually will fail an exam if you write anything novel and don't just reproduce the exact text printed in the textbook. So anyone who actually manages to get some kind of understanding and pass the course is doing something above-and-beyond what the coursework prescribes, by both memorizing the text and working to understand it. Someone who learns nothing but merely memorizes the textbook will get a 100%, and someone who comprehends and retains the knowledge but fails to memorize the exact text in the textbook will get a 0%. At the college level there is a huge variation in quality. At one end there's the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) which are world-class and highly competetive research institutions providing a truly top-notch education. However, many students go to for-profit colleges that sprung up to meet the huge increase in demand for education and come out with degrees of questionable utility. These people are often of high aptitude, but were put through systems where they were made to learn narrow material (e.g. upper-division courses on Java 7 or Oracle 8i). This leads to the appearance of success in the short-run with high paying jobs right out of college, but a lack of preparation in the long-run (and a lack of knowledge of the lack of preparation). That said, it's not all bad. One could argue that while the grade school education sucks, the higher-education system in India is actually far more pragmatic than the overly idealistic American system. Trade schools and practical job-oriented degrees are far more common in India than the US. In the US we like to pretend that everyone is training to become some kind of airy-fairy academic (with our liberal-arts degrees and theory-focused engineering degrees), and yet we also want to pass everyone. We deny the reality that most people are looking to acquire practical skills for gainful employment. This leads to a situation where we shun practical vocational training, and instead give everyone a diluted version of a pure academic education. Disclaimer: I grew up in the American educational system and have observed the Indian system only through my family members and friends-of-family (and a small amount of first-hand experience). I haven't experienced the Indian system up-close as an adult, and I'm sure the above is tainted with a fair amount of Western-centric bias where my expectations are simply miscalibrated. I look forward to corrections from people who have actually been through the Indian system.

by jmduke 13y ago

eshvk 13y ago

> 2. I wish decentralized certification systems became a bigger thing. Personally, I would love to be able to take a definitive test on whether or not I knew Python well enough to spend forty hours a week working in Python. Make it open notes and timed, like the real world is. I know this used to be a big thing in the 90's, but that was before my time -- why did this go out of style? Did the rapid advancement and evolution of the industry prove the system prohibitively time/effort-consuming? The problem is when you have enough desperate unethical people to break any system of testing that you can throw at them. During my undergrad, there were books that were filled with possible questions that could come up in the statewide exams. One was supposed to memorize the answers (given in the book) and write the same answer in the exams. I remember when I wrote my GRE, there were people constructing a database of all the possible questions that showed up in a particular month of the GRE. Every system is breakable; your decentralized certification system will make it only easier for a bunch of people who don't know shit but have shiny new certificates to show up.

kamaal 13y ago
Well said. >>people constructing a database of all the possible questions that showed up in a particular month of the GRE. Every system is breakable But on similar line something similar happens in the industry too. Look at interviewing. There exists of a database of interview questions that you need to learn to game the interview. To an extent programming in itself is largely that. Cook books, google search solutions. Heck bulk of programming is organizing a database of solution patterns to most commonly known problem patterns.
- eshvk 13y ago
  > Look at interviewing. There exists of a database of interview questions that you need to learn to game the interview. That is part of the reason that I have become tired of the tech industry; its job application process is silly. There is enough correlation and causation issues. As an interviewer, you assume that a lifestyle, schools, ability to solve a bunch of textbook algo problems means that the person will be a good employee; as an interviewee, you assume that a company which asks such questions, talks about exotic languages, technologies, provides free lunches and other crap will be the good fit for you. I have decided I am going to ask companies if I can work for x time for them on a project; then we can figure out in practice whether we are both good fits and then decide on a final settlement. Of course, this will never become widespread because it fucks with the H1B system and a lot of people are still convinced that the way tech interviews happen is the right way.

jey 13y ago

It seems that most Indians who are knowledgeable and well-educated got that way despite the educational system, not because of it. Sure, a tiny proportion of elite students have access to high-quality education, but everyone else seems to be shoved through absolutely awful courses. The worst example I've seen of this is that until 12th grade, Indian tests consist solely of reproducing memorized material! I mean this literally: you actually will fail an exam if you write anything novel and don't just reproduce the exact text printed in the textbook. So anyone who actually manages to get some kind of understanding and pass the course is doing something above-and-beyond what the coursework prescribes, by both memorizing the text and working to understand it. Someone who learns nothing but merely memorizes the textbook will get a 100%, and someone who comprehends and retains the knowledge but fails to memorize the exact text in the textbook will get a 0%. At the college level there is a huge variation in quality. At one end there's the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) which are world-class and highly competetive research institutions providing a truly top-notch education. However, many students go to for-profit colleges that sprung up to meet the huge increase in demand for education and come out with degrees of questionable utility. These people are often of high aptitude, but were put through systems where they were made to learn narrow material (e.g. upper-division courses on Java 7 or Oracle 8i). This leads to the appearance of success in the short-run with high paying jobs right out of college, but a lack of preparation in the long-run (and a lack of knowledge of the lack of preparation). That said, it's not all bad. One could argue that while the grade school education sucks, the higher-education system in India is actually far more pragmatic than the overly idealistic American system. Trade schools and practical job-oriented degrees are far more common in India than the US. In the US we like to pretend that everyone is training to become some kind of airy-fairy academic (with our liberal-arts degrees and theory-focused engineering degrees), and yet we also want to pass everyone. We deny the reality that most people are looking to acquire practical skills for gainful employment. This leads to a situation where we shun practical vocational training, and instead give everyone a diluted version of a pure academic education. Disclaimer: I grew up in the American educational system and have observed the Indian system only through my family members and friends-of-family (and a small amount of first-hand experience). I haven't experienced the Indian system up-close as an adult, and I'm sure the above is tainted with a fair amount of Western-centric bias where my expectations are simply miscalibrated. I look forward to corrections from people who have actually been through the Indian system.