Are companies really legally disallowed from using IQ tests in the USA?<p>This is definitely not the case in India - most companies that come to an engineering college campus for mass hiring follow this process:<p>1. Initial screen on grades
2. Written test for for those past the first filter (might be technical, or an "IQ" test)
3. In-person interview<p>Of course, keeping in mind some of the people that go through this process successfully, the bar is laughably low for all of these. (And of course, mass hiring companies get lazy and re-use questions, so there's quite a thriving industry built around 'question banks' for steps 2 and 3 above.)
Graduates traditionally are trained by employers to be functional employees.<p>The point of the original article is that few graduates have any skills of use to the employer, making their degrees worthless.<p>Having interviewed many Indian graduates over the last ten years, I've learned to ignore their CVs and simply talk to them. If they seem bright and keen to learn they can be useful, but they're only considered because they're cheap.
Genuine question: would anything legally prevent an employer from giving an IQ test as part of the hiring process if they wanted to? The standard interview techniques often discussed on HN don't seem very far from that anyway.
I thought the reason for keeping graduating colleges as a recruitment criterion was because large organizations just don't have the time to wade through thousands of applications. The HR departments can't really tell the difference between someone who can is super creative and someone who can just get the job done. They look at CV, referrals, past experience.<p>Though I agree that creativity cannot be attributed to ivy-league alone. Reminds me how Howard Roark got hired by Henry Cameron in the book Fountainhead. Inspite of being a dropout, Cameron hires him based on Roark's design work.<p>Current education system were primarily designed during the industrial revolution. Focus was to give people enough training so that they can <i>operate the machines</i>. Though US education system has changed quite a bit, most other countries (for example, India..) are lagging far behind. Hopefully, this will change soon.
The other thread (<a href="http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2411695" rel="nofollow">http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2411695</a>) on HN took a turn for the angry and the personal so I will put my thoughts here. Though there will be few personal bits here as well.<p>It is ok to be dissatisfied with the education one received in India (and blame your parents for making poor choices while you are at it). But for the complaints to be understood by a non-indian I thing some perspective is in order. I cannot even broach open all that needs to be said to even set the groundwork for a wholesome discussion. So I will stick to few select quirks that are quite unique to the Indian scene.<p>The first thing is that size of the population seeking college education is just mind-bogglingly huge. College education is perceived as mandatory. Till before a decade ago college education was thought to be the only, yes only, conceivable route to an honourable livelihood. I am talking about people who live above the basic subsitence levels and living (damn! why do I have this. I start typing phonetically when tired and dont even notice it. Meant leaving of course) out the richest.<p>On one hand we have this huge demand on the other we have the fact that college education is unbelievable cheap, or was. Things are changing now. It is still mostly cheap. To put things in perspective the entirety of my tuition bills for my undergraduate studies in engineering was $15. Yes that is right $15 for all four years put together. The way this works out is through govt subsidies. Furthermore the subsidies are not evenly distributed. There are a few top tier institutes that get a lot, less so for the second tier, drastically less so for the ones that are lower. I think the idea was to establish a a few key stirling institutes and drive traffic there. Part of the reason they converged on this model was scarcity of resources, financial as well as human and the fact that the govt was doing all the lifting.<p>But the capacity that these institutes can handle is tiny compared to the demand. Hence intense competiton. The only way to get flow control without increasing capacity was to make the process more and more competitive. And that competiton was not always aligned with the final goal of producing a well rounded and competent student.<p>Then comes the teachers. Apart from the top tier colleges, a teaching job is mostly an easy free parking spot. You can get by doing absolutely nothing. So it attracts people who want to do nothing, or who could not find other suitable means of employment. The salaries are modest, but given what you have to do to earn it, it was pretty much a handout. A part of it was also to absorb the grad students that were being produced and were not in high demand because of then much slower economy.<p>What about private colleges you say. They used to have a stigma attached. private colleges were the places you went to when you werent scholastically good enough. How a rich dad would bail out his kid. Well the not so rich too, they would rather go bankrupt than deny a college education to their children. These colleges were mostly a glorified retail shop for degrees. Because of this they would not attract the good teachers. But this is changing slowly as they are throwing unignorable wads of money. But people still perceive it as a fight between honour and money.<p>Now lets turn to the other thread. It was mentioned there that parents decide what you want to study and it is either medicine or engineering. Yes there are parents who are control freaks, quite a few of them actually but the phenomena is not as nearly as widespread as the other thread would make you believe. But yes there is a huge, huge bias for opting for medicine or engineering. The immediate purpose of education is seen as a means of securing your future rather than for the purpose of edification. Till before a decade ago the security in those professions were head and shoulders above the other. By a huge margin. And even then around 60 to 70% of the graduating engineers would find a job right after graduation. A scenario that is quite drastically different now. So you can imagine how the other "riskier" propositions fared. I too was advised to straddle the options of medicine and engineering and did so. Hated the memorization that went into biology. But now I do not begrudge that at all. I feel I am at an advantage because of it.<p>But how was the quality of the undergrad education you ask?
Well I went to a institute that was shy of the top tier, and much of my undergrads I was quite wasted anyway. But very early enough I developed deep contempt for many of our teachers and chose to educate myself on my own. I cut classes frequently but would spend time hidden in the library reading something of interest. Way more productive than a lecture that I was sure I would get nothing from. I started of as a mechanical engineer (well manufacturing to be precise) and now am doing machine learning and there was a bit of robotics down the way, and CNC machine programing and programing computational geometry algorithms in between.<p>The government is aware of the problem and actually is trying to recruit heavily from the US universities. But then again for the top tier colleges.
India follows the "Sheep Herd" mentality.
The whole country's economy is based on people getting into "Profitable" domains mostly following the success of a pioneer in the field.
The most recent example of this ideology is the "Business Process Outsourcing" industry.<p>New BPO units are propping up here and there at a dime a dozen leading to a quality deterioration in the final deliverable.
This process will continue till a saturation level is reached and then they will wait till another "Killer" domain picks up momentum.<p>Till then India will be in a so called "Calm Period" where nothing great and major takes place.
I guess, these things sort themselves out in a capitalist society. I guess, there is nothing really to worry about :)<p>Indian higher educational institutes and their ratings correlate well on a log graph. This is the way it should ideally be (it is a well designed filter). Only problem is that the highest rated institutes are few and far between. The students admitted in these top-tier universities have cleared entrance examinations with a standard deviation of less than 5% (this is a guess, it is likely even less). A lot of potentially good students are therefore left out of an opportunity for better education (rather a better starting job, due to the hiring culture).<p>It is true that the 'education' in India sucks - it is outdated, and often not worth the 4 years spent in acquiring it. However, the log correlation ensures that top-tier universities are damn hard to get into, and those few than do get into them (for example, the IITs) are by far the best in the world (compared to anywhere).<p>Given some more economic pressure, more top-tier universities should popup soon. As for finding customer service workforce, I think, its about time India starts offshoring it elsewhere ;)
"So knowing that a college is rigorous in its admission standards is a way to signal prospective employers that the graduates from that college are already vetted."
I would say that the admission standards here in India are very rigid , going by the top two engineering entrance exams. For IITs 4k out of 150k people who write the exam get admissions whereas for the RECS and some second tier colleges the admission rate was around 15-20%. Hence i think the problem is not that the admission standards are lax.
What the wsj article was hinting at a lack of basic comprehension and technical skills. Lack of comprehension skills(in English) can be explained by the fact that English is not the first language ,even though it may be the medium of instruction.
The other weakness has a lot to do with lack of interest, motivation and also a sense of lethargy which sets in after going through two years of what can best be described as a bootcamp preparing for the engineering entrance exams.
"Ultimately, an impressive college credential from a good college serves to a prospective employer as an extended IQ test, a sort of legal signaling device."<p>I know this community likes to hate on non-technical college degrees, but the sort of thinking treats "real" liberal arts degrees quite unfairly. Believe it or not, but broad, challenging programs produce a substantial change in the willing student. Like it is often said, the technical knowledge is often better obtained on the job.
Here is a question for the Indian readers:<p>Is there a cultural issue here? Perhaps the employers are looking for forthright people, while (the limited number of) young Indian grads I've met are usually soft-spoken and more circumspect. Could this be the issue.<p>I find what zwischenzug said to be true, that most graduates are trained by their employers, not by the universities.
what i have from my own experience is every one treats technical courses like a mathematical function.
Go through course Y and you will be more smarter than people from course X.I always keep hearing stuff like "Brigding the gap between industry and acedemia" which i never seem to understand. Trying to do something other then mentioned in your ciricullum is considered taboo. Most of my friends have "outsourced" thier final semester academic projects to a institute which prepares it for them. Dont trust me? have a look at this <a href="http://goaltechnologies.in/new/?page_id=13" rel="nofollow">http://goaltechnologies.in/new/?page_id=13</a>