Students are the victims and culprits of India’s broken higher education system

I agree that nationalism is ruining India. But, this article paints quite a one-sided picture. You can see that in this sentence: "Indian students are taking their useless Indian liberal arts degrees and going abroad to get real ones that signify a real education".<p>See? That's just it! Most people who do well in high-school get pushed into technical fields. My cousins are mostly engineers or doctors, and a few are lawyers. "Liberal arts"? That's something that children of rich parents do when they are not too good at studies. Some girls do it when they want to be housewives when they are done with studies.<p>I have a bachelors in EE (E&#38;C) and have worked for a few multinationals. I have had to work with western-European and American colleagues. If I were asked for my subjective evaluation, I'd say that my EE colleagues at this level are more or less the same. Yes, the degree mills of India do churn out engineers by the millions. 10% of them understand what they have learnt. The others memorize and regurgitate their notes. It's fairly easy to screen people at this level. And that's why I find my colleagues comparable.<p>Leaving aside medicine, about which I know nothing, a masters degree from India in science or engineering is mostly useless. Academia, with the exception of IITs and IISc, is mostly a joke.<p>To conclude: Yes, education here is generally bad, but not as bad as this article paints it out to be.

I had a history professor who attended Berkeley in the 60s. He recalled the instructional methods used by one of his own professors at Berkeley: He simply got up to the podium, opened a textbook, and started reading. There was no discussion or chances to ask questions. As I recall, he indicated that this was a method of lecturing that had its roots in European academia.<p>A question for HNers from India: With such a long history of sending students to British and American universities, are Anglo-American methods of teaching, research, mentoring, etc. transferred back to Indian universities by returnees who start academic careers?

&#62; reservation system for the admission of scheduled castes and others residing at the bottom of India's <i>socioeconomic</i> pyramid<p>Correction: it's <i>social</i> pyramid only. Classification of SC/STs is purely based on caste alone, not on economic status -- and we must fight to make it <i>economic</i>-only pyramid.

There are no Indian universities in the top 200 universities according to the QS World Universities rankings. There are only 3 in the top 300! While I don't know if this is an institutional deficiency(lack of research, distinguished professors) or a lack of quality among students, one thing is for sure and that is Indian degrees are not very respected worldwide aside from possibly Indian Institute of Technology.<p>From what my father tells me, the K-12 education system is also broken. The public education system is considered a joke in India to the point that anyone who can enrolls their kids into private schools as soon as possible. Most students who pass India's rigorous college entrance exam take extensive coaching(as my cousins have), and this results in a system of college acceptance being determined by wealth.<p>The thing is, I can't see change coming. India has yet to address nationwide corruption that cripples the whole country!

This was published weeks back in The Hindu: <a href="http://www.thehindu.com/features/education/college-and-university/an-indian-education/article4683622.ece" rel="nofollow">http://www.thehindu.com/features/education/college-and-unive...</a>

All I can say is "good luck, you'll need it." I don't think India has a unique problem with its' higher ed system.<p>Consider that the modern university is based on ideas developed in the late Middle Ages, throw in a healthy dash of politics (both formal and informal), and the gatekeeper factor, why would any university feel the need to change?<p>Do today's kids have the gumption to boycott the system? We didn't - instead we adapted, just like the kids at St. Stephen's.<p>To be fair to Indians, we Americans probably get even more agitated at criticism from outside (or inside.)

The author of this article tweeted a response by a Professor from the same college: <a href="http://kafila.org/2013/05/06/the-golchakkar-of-premier-institutions-st-stephens-college-as-a-public-concern-n-p-ashley/" rel="nofollow">http://kafila.org/2013/05/06/the-golchakkar-of-premier-insti...</a>

Ugh. Quartz. Readability makes this much more tolerable:<p><a href="http://www.readability.com/articles/ppb4ycws" rel="nofollow">http://www.readability.com/articles/ppb4ycws</a>

Again, I can't reach the article. I end up at "China manufacturing shrinks in May, leaving policymakers with few good options", just as happened with the previous qz link<p><a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5756176" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5756176</a>

I feel the comparison to American Educational system is rather unfair, the American Higher Education being much more evolved and the best there is. IMHO Indian Education system would compare favorably to many other countries with the same socio-economic factors. This is not to say the system does not need to improve, but so does the Education system everywhere else (more of the sort of MOOCs/Khan Academy for instance; college fees have been increasing sharply in India).<p>In my personal opinion historically the Colleges in India were more occupied by handing out more degrees and not education. To go beyond the routine was always due to self initiatives of the select few and not the majority. If the colleges increased the standards higher than the usual then a majority of students would fail ( "out of syllabus" was a regular complaint if the exams were too hard). This is not a critique of the Educational system, rather I feel glad that my Indian college education was easy enough to let me pursue avenues which benefited me more than what was taught in classroom. A degree from a reputed Indian college is only to open doors, what you learn depends entirely on how motivated you are.

The problem pointed out in the article is a commonly accepted truth in India. Some hard truth - even though there have been many efforts to bring the economically and socially under developed class into the mainstream, it has not happened yet. Most of the students who even come to UG especially college's like St. Stephens are from middle class or upper middle class families. They have very little incentive to fight the system. The brand comes with privilege which is the only thing they are after. In short, people do not fight the system but have learned to make it work for them. The poor and downtrodden are the unfortunate majority who are not able to do it.

One of the biggest disadvantages plaguing Indian education system is quota / reservations - 50% of the seats are reserved. So which means half of your peers are there just because of their caste / gender.<p>Even worse, quota exists for teaching positions too. So half of your teachers are in that position only because of their caste / gender and not because of mastery over the stuff they are teaching.

How was education in the USSR? I was under the impression that the Indian system borrowed quite a bit from their model.

&#62;To pause for a moment, here is the problem with me talking about this topic: right now many Indians reading this are starting to feel defensive.<p>No, we are not. We both know it is broken. You definitely should've taken a glimpse into Engineering Education and you would have died, except if it's not the IITs.

The article is partial to a very western view of education.<p>Lecturing from a book, or from notes, is sometimes the right thing to do, especially when teaching to students who will have trouble following the class otherwise (by lack of discipline, by just being unused to that way of teaching or simply if they can't afford the references book you are asking them to read, or don't have the time to do that).<p>The most important is what the student get from the class, not how elite or interactive the teacher is.<p>If most students understand better after rote learning some dictated notes - why not do that?<p>After all, it is a good way to ensure the majority of students will have a proper base material to learn from, without too many mistakes thrown in, especially if they can't offer books. If they can "do better", don't worry, top students will use their notes as what they truly are - base material, a list of keywords to build their knowledge from, with the help of google or books.<p><i>professor told us the entire Mahabharata epic from memory ... this professor exemplified passionate teaching.</i><p>See, memory can be helpful.<p>One needs both memory and understanding. The US system seems to overemphasize understanding. Other systems may overemphasize understanding.<p>I would not call either system "balanced".<p><i>real education being one that challenges the intellect and questions paradigms, not one of rote memorization and conformity</i><p>That's biased. How can you challenge the intellect and question paradigms if you don't know them in the first place?<p>There is a time for everything. Maybe a 3rd year college is not the best moment to question paradigms.

Indian education system is designed to create employees, not employers. Trade/commerce is exclusively reserved to <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bania_%28caste%29" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bania_%28caste%29</a> for over 3000 years in India.