Friday, September 01, 2006

Quality of Engineers?!?!?!

Please dont get misguided by the title. I read a few articles from EE Times and from www.embedded.com. Instead of writing my opinions I thought I will blog the links of the articles and let your opinions flow.

According to me the article gives signals about a more serious issue at hand - our quality of education and the whole system behind it. Our colleges and universities churn out engineers every year. For the colleges, they are after the money rather than the quality. And some have some horrible rules and regulations which will stop the free thinking mind to grow and become a part of the template that college puts forth. The government does not care about any of these.

I would say 'perspective' is the missing piece of the puzzle. We never think education as an investment. Even an uneducated would know that if he/she invest some money in the bank they expect the money to grow and yield some income to them. But when it comes to education we never see it as an investment. Parents see it as a responsibility to get education to their children. What is the return on investment? Students start worrying about their life only when they reach the final year of their education. I wouldn't want to go into every little detail that contributes to this big problem.

Take your time to read these articles and throw in your 2 cents.

The following link is the source article ("State of the Engineer: The young and the restless") that has spawned a chain of responses in EE Times and embedded.com:

http://www.eetimes.com/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=192202043

Here are two of the responses:-

1. "Over my dead body":

http://www.eet.com/news/latest/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=192300023

2. "Don't look at India as low-cost talent" - by a Manager in India who also has experience working in the US:

http://www.embedded.com/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=192300881

4 comments:

Badhri said...

Finally! Anther post!
The "over my dead body" guy sounds unreasonable, but he does have a point!

Nope, I am not against outsourcing. But progress starts with identification and acceptance of the problem. Indians graduating from India *are* on an average less of engineers than those from the US.

Intel's Whitefield processor is a glaring example. We are clearly not transfering the edge the students have when they pass out 12th grade into engineering.

Unknown said...

To say something on the lines of "Over my dead body", the issue or problem is taken more personal. I find the response from the Manager who is right now in India and has the experience of working in the US and managing teams in India to be more balanced.

Prakash G said...

Hmmm. interesting. I think, Indians have to grow more in talent than hard working + massaging + politics. in short, we need more talent + straight forwardness. Talent is very hard to define. We definitely lack "open mindedness" comparitively, that is what I mean by talent. Talent is not just what you know, but open to new technologies. of course there are exceptions as always.

some sources of problem that can I think of
1) Education is not interesting
2) Indians are on average close minded ( example, even if u want to go to Civil engineering, you will be forced to study computer science)
3)Indians gives respect to the society than individual. I think 2 and 3 are interconnected
4)sudden surge in availability of jobs. e.g.,If a new-bie driver is given ferrari, do you think, he will appreciate it?. but eventually it will ironed out. A new-bie driver drives toyota tercel and ferari alike. you can not blame him.

Unknown said...

Prakash, I wouldn't say people in our place respect the society. They care more about their image than their own interest. And I agree with you on your fourth point.