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 el

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.