[bdhe]

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.

[grannyg00se]

"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]

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.

[yummyfajitas]

Isn't that how it works in the US as well?

In general no. Some specific programs may have a special admissions program (art and music are culprits here) and sometimes you need to apply to a specific school (e.g. Engineering vs Arts & Sciences). But usually, you can major in "Undeclared" for your first 2 years.

I've always hated the notion that we expect 18 year old people to invest $25-100k on education in "Undeclared Major" with the eventual hope that they will figure something useful out. It's almost as silly as dropping $25-100k on "Undeclared Stock or ETF", though unlike "Undeclared Stock or ETF", there is some hedonic benefit.

[nostrademons]

Isn't that what an index fund is? "Undeclared" stock - you'll get whatever the average of the market is buying.

Just because they're an undeclared major doesn't mean they're not learning anything. You still take courses for those first two years - you just don't know what they're leading up to. It's not all that unlike founding a startup knowing that you'll have to pivot to get to a viable product.

(I was a de facto physics major for my first 3 semesters, switched back to being actually undeclared for my 4th (flirting with philosophy and sociology majors in the process), actually declared as a physics major in my 5th, and then switched to a CS major in my 8th and last. Just because you think you know what you're doing doesn't mean you actually do.)

[hvs]

You can change degrees fairly easily but, depending on the requirements for your new degree, you may have to fulfill a number of additional requirements. For example, if you are going to a large public university and are in their engineering program studying for an electrical engineering degree, you can switch over to computer science with very little difficulty. However, if you are in the liberal arts college studying philosophy and want to switch to computer science in the engineering college, you will often have certain minimum requirements to be accepted into the college (much like if you had applied from outside).

Overall, though, US universities and colleges are very flexible compared to other countries. Probably why they are so popular with foreign students. :)

[pjscott]

Another data point here: my first year of studying electrical engineering was almost exactly the same as the freshman year of someone studying any engineering field, and it's common for people to switch majors after one or two semesters. If it's a switch from one branch of engineering to another, it's pretty much effortless.

I hear that things are similar in other majors: if you're switching from one major to another that's fairly close to it (e.g. from molecular biology to botany) it'll be pretty easy. Longer jumps are more difficult, especially if you're going into a major with long prerequisite chains, like mathematics.

[hvs]

That's kind of the point I was trying to make in the initial post. The first one to two years in engineering schools tend to be very similar across majors. Physics, Chemistry, Mathematics are all required. After about your sophomore year, you will be adding quite a bit of time to your college career if you decide to switch.

[jarek]

If switching from EE to CS is very easy, one or both are being taught wrong.

[nhamann]

It is my understanding that at top schools like MIT at Berkeley, EE and CS are actually combined into a single undergraduate degree.

e.g. "The Berkeley EECS major, offered through the College of Engineering (COE), combines fundamentals of computer science and electrical engineering in one major."

[jarek]

The fact that they are combined to form a third program underlines the point.

[francoisdevlin]

Remind me where CS came from again?

[adamzochowski]

This is the old debate of whether CS should stand for Computer Science ( chips / signals / digital electronics ) or Computing Science ( algorithms / language design ).

[jarek]

Mathematics?

[georgecmu]

Philosophy.

[gamble]

Even in Canada, liberal arts students don't have to declare a major until they're a couple of years in. However, for STEM degrees you've generally got to know where you want to go by the end of high school, or by the end of freshman year at the latest.

Of course, in the US and Canada you can generally switch programs in midstream. That may not be possible in India.

[fryguy]

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).

[mquander]

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.

[adhipg]

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.

[yummyfajitas]

Economics also plays a big role. Most of us outside India just don't get this.

In India, your choices are the following:

a) Be a (relatively, not absolutely) rich doctor or engineer in the top 2.5% [1] of India (in terms of income).

b) Be poorer than the bottom 2.5% of Americans. Very likely, be poor even by the standards of Brazil or Mexico.

I'd work a job I hate to avoid that. I'd encourage my kids to do the same. Most people would.

http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/01/31/the-haves-and-t...

[1] Rough approximation: I am assuming the 2.5% mark corresponds to the average of the top/bottom ventile in the graph I linked to.

[csomar]

But this won't solve the problem, does it? This will actually make it worse and lead to unhappy/tired generations. I'll actually sensibles people and push them to make a revolution.

[yummyfajitas]

The situation sucks, but only economic growth will solve the problem. The fundamental problem is scarcity - not enough wealth to go around.

A revolution against economic reality will not create wealth.

(Granted, a revolution against corrupt government workers demanding bribes might. If that's the revolution you want to start, I'll lend my pitchfork.)

[baltcode]

Thank you! Some "real" problems have to be solved before one can blame amorphous entities like "learning problem solving", passion, culture, etc.

[danenania]

"The fundamental problem is scarcity"

Is it? I think distribution is more the issue. We shouldn't underestimate the paralyzing impact pervasive bureaucracy and corruption can have on an economy.

[JonnieCache]

>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.

[CrLf]

I think it is exactly the same in most/all of Europe. And let me say that I think that's a good thing, but I'll get to why.

Let me give Portugal as an example, as it is where I live...

By the start of the 10th grade we had two major choices for the next three years, either go to a "professional school" or to a "regular school". Neither blocks access to the university, but the regular school's curriculum is mostly tailored towards it, as the professional schools are more tailored to just finish 12th grade and go work somewhere.

By the end of the 12th grade you must choose what course you want to take at the university. I chose Computer Science/Computer Engineering (a 5-year course).

The first three years of a course like this is a pretty inflexible curriculum (maths, physics, programming, miscelaneous computer science stuff, electronics, some history). The next two years are more flexible, you can choose your courses, but within the computing subject.

Nothing stops you from learning stuff from whatever subjects you like on the side. But the (mostly) fixed path means that someone who graduates from a CS/CE course (or any other) really knows something about CS/CE (and not only the subjects he/she deemed interesting enough to enroll in).

This means you don't end up with computing people that never used a functional programming language (or don't even know what the hell that is), or don't know how regular expressions actually work in a formal setting. They may choose to forget about it, or never actually need it, but they will be better professionals because of it. $DEITY knows that I took a lot of uninteresting courses in college, but sometimes that knowledge comes in useful in weird ways.

Flexibility is just fine if you have the discipline, but it is a killer if you really don't know what the hell you want.

[metageek]

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.

[markfenton]

Modern British universities have always required you to 'read' a particular subject. The major change after WWII was to make them available to more people by changing the funding model rather than the educational system they provided.

The move to vocational courses for things outside the obvious (such as medicine) is a more recent phenonemon, in part bought on by large numbers of people going to university as it is the 'done thing' rather than by a desire to be educated, and in part by a return to a funding system requiring the students to pay for the education and wanting something tangible at the end of it (a job).

[metageek]

OK, but there's a difference between requiring students to pick a subject in advance and picking it for them.

[sid6376]

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]

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.

[shriphani]

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.

[w1ntermute]

> 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.

[movingahead]

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_f...

We lack a culture where hacking and playing around with things is encouraged.

[sparkymat]

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.

[bdhe]

> 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.

[bdhe]

> 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.