| Here is what is wrong after having been taught in a decent engineering college in India. 1) One studies hard trying to get into a decent engineering college. If they are even wee bit good, they get into a decent college. Sidenote: For anyone who says they did not get into a good college and are doing great in life now (at least intellectually), here is what happened. You were not so great or smart when you gave that exam. You got to learn through self learning, fear of not being able to do great stuff in life and a lot of experience or got away to US in a decent college because your family could afford it. 2)Once they get into the college, the freedom, the fun, the energy, the beer, the drugs often bring the worse out of them. If none of the above they probably trade lectures for Counter Strike sessions (I mean 6-7 hours of continuous sessions everyday) or Poker or some new shit. The sad part is these people are still doing the right thing since the guy taking the class most probably knows nothing about the subject too and if they do are either bad teachers or too obnoxious to be able to impart knowledge to a mind that is vulnerable to wandering off to butterflies or scribbles at the back of notebook or tweeting (the hot new stuff). 3) So even if you were the CS guy in school, the agony of being taught by people who were not the best people for the job leaves one disappointed. Something as cool as programming no longer is exciting because you have to do exactly what is expected of you. [Anecdotal evidence: I actually was never much of a programmer. I kept passing every exam by just writing logic and pseudocodes. I did write a simple factorial using something other than recursion and the lab in charge got the better out of me. Then on I left bothering myself, so by the time we were being taught data structures, I had lost my ground.] The people who are the toppers in a class are those who attend every lecture (does not matter what they get out of it) and show utter respect for the profs. 100% attendance and you are bound to get a decent score in the end sems. That is when studying loses its charm. 4) At the end of college getting a good job means getting into a consultancy. Many smarter companies just do not allow Non CS people to sit for programming jobs even when they prove to be great. [ Anecdotal Evidence: A friend of a friend from a non CS degree got into Facebook US, before being not allowed to sit by Google India and MS India] So call it lack of opportunities, self belief, hard work of students, peer pressure, you end up being just a graduate. Not an engineer in any sense of word. |