[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.

[yummyfajitas]

No matter how you distribute $3k per person per year (PPP adjusted), it's not very much.

I don't think I underestimated the impact of bureaucracy and corruption - if you notice, I sort of advocated lynching corrupt government officials.

[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.