[magic_haze]

As an Indian student who tried to get through the "system", I can relate to this. I was really into computers and programming in high school, so I decided to go into the engineering stream in the "+2" years (basically, 11th and 12th grades, as opposed to the biology stream, which supposedly preps you for medical school). I remember the parental and peer pressure particularly well: my dad was pretty much opposed to it because he felt taking biology would "lead to more options later", but I was not convinced. Most of my friends suffered through the biology classes, and yet ended up in engineering degrees at college (and for the most part, are working at either Infosys or Wipro now. No one is doing anything even remotely related to medicine.)

The last few years of high school was basically hell for me: the government subsidies OP's article mentions are limited just for the biggies (IITs and RECs), and the chances of getting into them are very slim. You have to get through series of examinations that over the years have gotten very _very_ tough: they basically expect you to know things in Physics, Chemistry and Math that - atleast in the US - are not taught till the third year of college. Forget about high school - I went to IIT coaching centers, and was very miserable because I had no real interest in any of the subjects - I wanted to learn CS, dammit - why was I mugging up organic chem formulae?

Its not even worth it to consider joining other colleges. Job options are limited, but the worst part is they all require huge "donations" upfront for a laughable experience (both in terms of the teaching talent and curriculum).

Long story short, I didn't end up getting a sufficiently high ranking in the entrance exams (my choices in the placement, if I remember right, were either metallurgy in IIT or mechanical engineering in REC: the top 400 had basically grabbed up all the CS degrees. Remember: over 400,000 students write the exam every year, so almost everyone ends up in a field they're not interested in.) so I decided to take a huge student loan and come study in the US. I don't regret the decision: I'm now doing what I love, and have gotten _so_ much more exposure than my peers back home it's not even funny.

When I went back to India to do an internship (and enjoy the vacation) a couple of years back, I was appalled by how little enthusiasm most people have about the work they'd end up doing.

Horrible stuff.

[gnufied]

The problems of entrance exams are obvious, but you are not being fair - when you say, why did I had to mug organic formulae? Isn't that kinda, how everywhere? If all I want is to do - MS in CS from some top US university, why do I have to mug that word list for GRE?

> was very miserable because I had no real interest in any of the subjects

You had no interest in Physics & Mathematics? You can hardly blame people who set JEE questions, you don't expect them to ask to write C programs for the entrance exams, do you? Given, myriad subjects that are being taught at +2 level, only physics, chemistry & mathematics are universally taught across India. And the way I see it, It makes sense to ask questions from those subjects.

>When I went back to India to do an internship (and enjoy the vacation) a couple of years back, I was appalled by how little enthusiasm most people have about the work they'd end up doing.

Again, even in US, "most" people have very little enthusiasm towards work they are doing. But I believe, your story is little anecdotal too. Every one of my friend whom I know socially in Bangalore today, are programming their ass off. They work on weekends, on side projects, start up ideas or open source stuff. I understand, my experience is anecdotal too. But again, if you are willing to look beyond IT services, there are people who genuinely love programming, I guess thats how the case everywhere, pretty much.

[magic_haze]

yes, I agree. I understand why the JEE people decided to go that route, but all the same, it is completely unfair to the thousands of students and parents who are forced to go through this mess. The system of incentives is just so perverse.

This is not relevant to the discussion, but I was very interested in Mathematics: I would have loved to learn more (I even applied to the Indian Statistical Institute, but with all the effort required for the other exams, I simply didn't have the time to prepare well for its entrance test). But the whole experience turned me off. Seriously, how would you feel when your entire experience with geometry is limited to high school level, and suddenly someone comes up to you and asks you to prove Napoleon's Theorem (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Napoleon%27s_theorem) in under four minutes? My Math tutor did that.) I was completely burned out at the end of it all. Goddamn shame it had to happen that way.

> Again, even in US, "most" people have very little enthusiasm towards work they are doing. But I believe, your story is little anecdotal too.

Again, true. I was just speaking from my experience and how my high school batch (also in Bangalore) turned out. It would be silly of me to claim that with a 1 billion+ population, none are genuinely interested in programming.

[SingAlong]

I can relate to you but I did take up CompSci in 11th and 12th grades and was pushed by my parents to stick to what I wanted (lucky). They had probably noticed that I was spending too much time on the computer trying to create something or just tinker with it.

Joined Info Science engg later. But I've been disappointed since. I had to scrape through chem, physics and civil subjects (compulsory common subjects at my university for all first years). Rote learning is encouraged instead of practical work. Hiring is based on grades and not the ability to create/solve.

In most families joining startups is frowned upon for a funny reason. I had convinced my mom about startups and why they were the coolest places to work at. But a friend of her's turned up at our house, and asked me as to how I expect my mom to answer when a prospective bride's parents ask her about my place of work (it seems that I should be working at a popular place). I had to tell her in simpler words - I don't want to be the replace-able guy working in a cubicle knocking at the keyboard all day. and told her startups don't have cubicles and have a t-shirt culture. End of chapter ;)

People seem to care a lot about `social status` which is measured by money. The remedy would be to start to care about how the money is made rather than the money itself (it's difficult to totally eliminate it since people see social status as a measure of your value).

[ShabbyDoo]

If social status == money, why is starting a company so frowned-upon by Indian parents? Is it risk aversion on the part of brides' families? Is it considered better to marry your daughter off to, say, an IBMer where both the upsides and downsides are bounded than it is for your daughter to marry someone who is a risk taker? BTW, I'm a white American guy who is simply trying to understand.

[galadriel]

India has no welfare structure, zilch, zero, nada. More than half of population has no sanitation, lot of children are seriously suffering from malnutrition; and good schools are available to few.

If you are an entrepreneur in India, most probably you were lucky enough to be born in 20% of 'richer' family of India, and more often than not, a failure might put you back with the rest 80%. That is too much to bet, especially in a place where start-up in Silicon valley sense is quite difficult to setup.

[abhaga]

2 points. One is that starting a company is only frowned upon by a section of Indian society - the middle class professionals who grew up reading the mantra of job security. Also there are not yet enough stories of people making big by starting their own companies. Once we have few stories, things will change.

Second, a lot of people start companies and do business in India but since those are not in the traditional IT or other VC oriented sectors, they are not heard of that much in these circles. Also not a lot of these companies would be doing the "innovative" stuff but building businesses in well tested markets.

[raghava]

> risk aversion

Yes. In the West, it's your ideas that fail; out in the East, it's you who fail.

One word answer; culture.

[yummyfajitas]

In the US, the result of failure is bankruptcy and burning through your savings, followed by an upper middle class career track. Worst case, you are earning the pay of a 35 year old when you are 40 and your 401k is smaller.

In India, the downside is unbounded. Peru looks wealthy by comparison. 46% of the urban population doesn't have access to improved sanitation. I know a doctor in India who can't afford a water supply with one nine of uptime.

Under the same circumstances, I'm sure you'd also discourage your daughter from marrying an entrepreneur.

Granted, you probably wouldn't be locking her away from the outside world, discouraging her from getting educated (makes her less marriageworthy and harder to control), or selecting her husband for her. But that's a separate issue.

[sundars]

what you are saying is true. But one does needs to standup to one's beliefs. I did bachelors education in India, Masters in Compu Sc in US. returned to India, founder of a startup which was eventually sold to a US listed company. So it is possible to do it. Just needs relentless determination as PG says

[shreyas88]

Being an Indian and a former student myself, I can't relate enough to OP's article or to your comment. I took up biology in +2, because my mom insisted it would "lead to more options later" even though I wanted to take up Computer Science (Yes my +2 college had that as an option). But I didn't get to. And I regret that decision even now.

I ended up studying something I didn't like in Engineering and didn't get good grades. I failed in a few exams. As shown in the movie 3 idiots, I did get selected in 2 companies after Engineering, but due to those failed exams, they ended up not giving me an offer letter even though I had got selected among a group of 3000(me and 12 others had gotten selected.) And my classmates who memorized everything in the textbooks got a high salaried job. I mean these people would never even know how to solve the maths problems which weren't in the textbooks.

Anyway all this has left a very sour taste in my mouth regarding all things Indian. In the next few months, I'm going to the US to pursue a Computer Science Master's like I always wanted, but I do realize that this puts me at a disadvantage over people who did study Computer Science at the Bachelor's level. But I hope I can do well </rant>

[magic_haze]

man, that sucks. Good luck with your masters degree, though. (Where did you apply, if you don't mind me asking?)

I don't think there's that much of a difference in the curriculum itself, especially if you're majoring in CS and not SE. Most of the trouble, from what I've seen both in myself and other Indian students who've just come to do their masters here, is because of our attitude towards authority (yes, I'm being stereotypical here, but bear with me.)

For most of my high school education, I'd been accustomed to incompetent - and often sadistic - teachers and so I had a healthy hatred towards them. This carried on even in college, till I realized professors here were genuinely interested in helping students out, and they wouldn't mind me asking them questions, or guidance. I used to remain completely aloof even at my part-time job on campus, which turned out to be a bad idea. Anyway, I wouldn't have mentioned this if I hadn't seen the exact same behavior in many of the people who came here for grad school, so yeah.. treat them as your peers and you'll be fine.

[bbk]

Interested in CS, ended up doing Mech Engg, Worked for of those TCS/Infy type software houses in India.

Anecdote: First year in engineering, we had this computers course, so the lecturer was teaching about input and output devices (Yes they teach this even in engineering). He goes on "Computer pheriperals are either input OR output devices"

One student raised his hand and asked, "Sir, what about the touchscrens like in ATMs ?" (Touchscreen mobiles were not common, yet)

Lecturer goes silent for a minute, and replies "Son, dont try to be oversmart in my class"

-- Just something I saw. Not saying they are that bad everywhere.

[dman]

I agree with you on several points - too much emphasis on engineering/medicine, very tough competition and superfluous subjects but I disagree with your conclusion. a) There are colleges beyond IIT and REC and no they are not all bad. b) A case can be made that at least through high school people be aware of what different fields have to offer before choosing to specialize. c) Donations are limited only to management seats. Say what you may - admissions in India through centralized processes are very transparent, actually more so than here in the US. d) Most people everywhere have little enthusiasm for the jobs that they do. e) It is not all bad.

[magic_haze]

I'm not sure if my reply had any conclusions, but if it did, it is only that the difference in (supposed) quality of IITs vs. local colleges is atrocious, and this needs to rectified ASAP. However, it is important to remember this quality of education is merely a crutch, and it is completely up to the student on how he/she makes use of it. There are certainly many cases of students going way beyond what their peers have accomplished (best case in point: that whole Scoble/Yuvi Panda thing)

> a) There are colleges beyond IIT and REC and no they are not all bad

yes, but atleast in Bangalore, there's a nauseous culture of "IIT or nothing", supported mainly by BASE/FIITJEE and all those schools in Kota. It was very difficult for me to get out of it - if anything, it's gotten even worse since I left five years ago. I feel sorry for my cousins who are in their 8th grade now, and already being forced to go to a pre-JEE training (which, inevitably, will start as soon as they finish their 10th grade board exams. A training for a training for an examination that will then start their training? What kind of Alice in Wonderland crap is this?)

My parents are both professors at a certain well-known MBA factory in Bangalore, and trust me, the education system is worse than it looks. My mom was recently forced to use pencils when correcting examination papers (for the obvious reason), and my dad regularly complains about how he is forced to dumb down papers every semester or risk getting fired. Agreed, this is all anecdotal evidence, but it is damning nonetheless.

[dman]

I am from India and have had my fair share of suffering at the hand of the Indian education system. I dont want to be an apologist for the status quo but do want the rhetoric to be cooled down. For eg Here are a few non IIT institutions which are pretty decent a) http://www.iisc.ernet.in/ b) Bits Pilani c) Anna University

Also a) I think it is fair to say that a post which ends with "Horrible Stuff" is reaching some kind of conclusion. b) When I look at people who like me who "failed" at 12th grade and didnt get into IIT, I see that just the process of trying has served us well. c) Education as you rightly said is what you make it out to be. d) I do want to congratulate you for the strength of your convictions in choosing to pursue undergrad abroad when you realised that the Indian education system wasnt serving your needs.

[magic_haze]

You're right. My bad; remembering all those days cooped up studying Loney and K.D. Joshi made me emotional. Yes, it certainly helped me breeze through all my college math courses, but it's that sort of experience I wouldn't want even on my worst enemy.

[jseliger]

One question: does India have equivalents to U.S. private colleges and universities? It seems like one of the U.S.'s major strengths comes from the fact that you don't _have_ to choose public schools, which means that a) you have many more schools to choose from and b) the competition, especially for top students, forces public schools to be somewhat better.

A more minor Q, if you feel like answering it: which school are you at in the U.S.?

[SingAlong]

I don't know much about the US. In India, some universities have have campuses and some don't. There are colleges affiliated to them. Then, there are govt-run colleges and private colleges. In between those two, there are aided colleges, which are run by a private trust, but funded by the govt (the trust gets to make profit while the govt pays a specific grant every year which takes care of the institute's expenditure and faculty salaries).

There are also deemed universities. These are just privately run colleges that have been given authority to have their own curriculum, provided, they fulfill the infrastructure requirements and other stuff.

Faculty, except in a few reputed institutes, are horrible. Horrible as in worst massacre of the terms involved in the subject. We had a lecturer for web programming classes who said "AJAX is a programming language". Fine! Teaching in India isn't taken up based upon interest or merit. It's the job people see as a fallback. They end up there when they don't get into their beloved Infosys, Wipro, TCS and other body shopping companies (due to their low grades coz these companies hire by grades). Some of these faculty turn out to be ego machines who don't learn and never like to see their students knowing more. And the cycle goes on...

The some colleges have pathetic infrastructure and are still given approval for affiliation (cash under the table baby!).

BONUS - A funny incident: We were asked to submit an abstract for (compulsory) 30 minutes talks. The format given to us by our in-charge lecturer was a cover page with title and student name, a separate abstract page and put these in a stick file. It seems one paper with title, student name and abstract won't do.

[Lumbergh]

> The format given to us by our in-charge lecturer was a cover page with title and student name, a separate abstract page and put these in a stick file.

@SingAlong Your lecturer was just helping prepare you for the real world. So you wouldn't forget to put cover sheets on your TPS reports!

[rkwz]

>We had a lecturer for web programming classes who said "AJAX is a programming language"

I had a lecturer who said API was a programming language. It's only while studying for exams (during the study hols) I came to know what an API was. :|

[movingahead]

India does have many private colleges and universities, but their quality varies a lot. CS courses in most of them are dictated by the needs of the outsourcing biggies like Infosys and TCS, which doesn't gel with traditional CS hacking. However, with the rise in the startup culture, these private universities are changing for good.

PS: I am a student at one of these private universities.

[ideamonk]

Last 3 years of my higher education has been an emphasis on "what"s and not "how"s. But a college where every other week there's a test stacked up for the 6 subjects, syllabi is mixed up the way it should not be, even the last semester has two useless subjects lined up, and attendance is compulsory, it hardly leaves you with much time to answer the "how"s you've been wondering about.

This overburdened-ness hardly leaves students the time to think about what they'd love to do in life & any kind of self-improvement. Tired of such a monotonous routine for 3-4 years the escape route turns into getting a job asap -> hence your observation of "how little enthusiasm most people have about the work they'd end up doing" <- for they really never got a time to think & discuss about how they wish to drive their lives.

[csomar]

Thanks for the detailed comment. I just want to know how did you got the loan? The question is open for anyone too. I'm a third-world citizen looking to study in the USA and while can make my living, I don't think I can pay the expensive tuition fees.

[magic_haze]

Sure. I think its definitely worth getting a loan if you're really determined that's what you want. Most schools here (private ones included) give rather significant scholarships. You don't even need to apply for most cases: they just base it off your SATs and essay, and they usually give more if you go tell them about your circumstances.

I was actually one of the first ones in my country to get approved for such a large amount ($60K+ for five years (bachelors+masters)), and it helped that my dad was an employee of that bank. However, it was a really long process and many people were very dubious. My dad actually had to go all the way up to the CEO of the bank in order to get the approval, and those people were constantly behind my parents all this time checking up on my progress. Needless to say, it is very important that you not slip up.

But this was five years ago, and I've heard from my parents that a lot more students are been approved now after the banks saw its not that big of a risk. All in all, be prepared for a lot of bureaucratic hassle.

My recommendation, in retrospect, is that it is not generally worth it. You can learn more from the classroom videos MIT and Stanford have put up, and if you participate in open source projects, you can pick up the programming idioms and practices fairly well. Take advantage of what the internet has to offer. Most companies, atleast from what I've seen on HN, value your github commit log more than your degree as it says more about what your interests are.

[ido]

Why not go to continental Europe instead? Universities are mostly either very affordable or, in some cases, free.

[csomar]

If the quality matches, that's a great deal. I life in North Africa. But do you have any idea (which university, how to apply, requirements...)

[ido]

I went to the Vienna University of Technology.

Applying and requirements differ from one university to the other, but you can find the highest ranked ones (by subject) in several places online and the unis' websites normally tell you how to apply.

[rorrr]

My impression (and I might be very wrong) is that both Indian and Chinese education is concentrated on memorization rather than understanding. That's why so few people from both countries can solve problems (at least in my work experience).

I've interviewed a lot of people in the last 2 years, and I never look at the education level. I only care about your ability to solve problems. We've had people with masters in CS from good schools who could not solve trivial programming problems. We've had completely self-taught guys with a high school diploma, who aced the interview. HR cares about your education level, but if we want to hire you, they can't really say "no" to us. So if you're into IT, you're already light years ahead of all the mindless drones who got a degree just because IT pays well.

Smart people are always in demand. Keep educating yourself, in whatever field you choose. Become a pro, and you will always find a job. Do some contracts, or some open-source work, get your name out, you will make more and more money every year.

[magic_haze]

Sadly, as SingAlong mentioned (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2412393), the hiring system in India is based on grades (except for big name companies like MS or Google, that, from what my friends say, are still unfortunately doing that 90's thing of asking stupid "why are manhole covers round" type puzzles. Warning: Anecdotal Evidence. (I seem to be typing this a lot lately, I guess I need to get off HN for a bit.) But yeah, I agree - open source contribution is the best way of increasing programming proficiency.

[Stormbringer]

Based on the description in the article, they need the manhole questions more than we do :D

Which is to say that since the Indian education system as described in the article doesn't teach problem solving, and since you want people who have some problem solving ability, you must ask them to solve a problem in the interview.

But, I find the article confusing, it is about how a call centre company is struggling to find people who can't think outside the box... why the heck does a call centre company want people who can think? Aren't they just going to follow the same script day in and day out?? Wouldn't the ability to think for yourself actually be a curse at a company like that???

[zhivota]

I read it as them looking for people who can read, write, and converse in English. And that even with many technical graduates, they could only hire 3 out of every 100 that came into the office just to do those tasks.

Besides that, I know from living in the Philippines for six months that a call center job can be like striking gold for people who came up poor. Poverty here is so much different from poverty in the US that it's hard for Americans to understand the motivation of people here. A call center job may suck, but it could be the difference between life in a slum without basic sewerage, and eating at western chain restaurants while texting your friends on your new smart phone. What's basically a birthright in the US is highly prized here.

[wyclif]

Very true about the Philippines. However, a crucial difference is that most educated Filipinos have very good English language skills compared to many other SE Asian countries I've been to.

[tesseract]

I'm reminded of Feynman's critique of Brazilian physics education.

[contravert]

The ACM ICPC suggests that Asian universities do quite well at programming:

http://cm.baylor.edu/ICPCFinalResults2010

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ACM_International_Collegiate_Pr...

[babar]

Do people think these kinds of competitions provide a good correlation with what makes an good developer for a software company? I feel like solving a well-defined problem in a limited amount of time is a very different task than, say, architecting a system that will be worked on for years by a team of people, or refining a vague set of business requirements into something that can actually be built, or finding an unreproducible concurrency bug in 1000s of lines of someone else's undocumented code.

[ideamonk]

You mean, Chinese do great ?

[rorrr]

By no means I meant that every Chinese developer is incapable of solving problems. I'm talking about my average experience at work.

ACM competitions are in no way indicative of the overall picture. I went to a few of these competitions myself and got my ass kicked by some younger Asian kids. ACM finals represent the top of the top fastest thinking developers you can find. When you have a billion people, you will produce some brilliant ones regardless of how broken the education system is. Plus I bet that

1) Almost none of the finalists went to average schools.

2) All of the finalists practiced solving ACM Archive Problemset day and night (unlike the rest of the students), and probably skipped a lot of the regular classes.

[anonymoushn]

2) All of the finalists practiced solving ACM Archive Problemset day and night (unlike the rest of the students), and probably skipped a lot of the regular classes.

Both times I attended ICPC world finals our team had only practiced once a week for 3-6 hours, but we were much worse than many teams that did not qualify from more competitive regions. The people who are the best at these things really do spend a lot of time practicing, though. The kid who beat Neal Wu at IOI practices 3-4 hours a day.