Problem with engineering institutes in India is lack of the industrial practices. The engineering students will hardly have any exposure to industry specific work during engineering. Only thing they bother is to fetch more marks in exams. The Indian B.E. is far far away form the MS and UG in US. You can find these differences easily on usenets. Hardly any Indian eng. student would reply to a core system level question. We need to change our higher education system and should produce quality eng. rather producing thousands of engineers every year. We should implement the system used in IITs where major emphasis is on understanding the core of the system and designs.
I am not a Engg graduate, i come from Bsc Mathematics background, but i have achieved from a level of a Programmer to software engineer to a Chief Technology Officer in a Fortune 5 company now. What I Learnd: My education does not have any relevance with what i do and what i did in IT industry. Lateral Thinking, Visionary ideas, outside the box thinking are the key for my success. These are inborn qualities but can be improved in many indivuduals in India. I teach all the people who i trained everything i know and everything i do. I also make them responsible for doing things and believe in them. They have shined a lot in their career. I believe that its the right training, right mentor and the belief which you make in a person builds him/her into a shining IT professional.
I graduated as a non CompSc grad from one of the IITs and was hired by one of the sw firms in bangalore. Same was the case with 17 of my co-recruits. We got the training and did decent job; but no-one really excelled. A 3 months training can never compensate for 4 years of education. 15 of us have left the industry in last 3 years. The story is so common...
Probably the course that comes closest to Industry needs in India is MCA. But most of the institutions running them are so pathetic that they attract only the average students and poor profs. Govt and industry both have high stakes in improving these programs.
We need more collaborations, on the line of IIITs. First 2 years of CS fundamentals (like present CS program), a summer internship, 1 year of electives mostly taken by the people from industry (Both MCA and CS types), one sem of second internship, last sem of projects and seminars from industry + placements etc. Use the brand name of IITs for these institutes ... it sells... have JEE as entrance test... it's fair... but dont produce another set of 'already in excess' civil and chemical engineers.
The truth is out. Yet once again it has been proved that we Indians believe in quantity and not quality. A few years ago when one my friends was doing an MCA course at IGNOU, out of 26-27 computers only 1 worked and this one machine was used by several students. I am sure the situation is equally dismal in other institutes and universities. And why not, our Govt does not lay empahsis on education. Also students in India are never encouraged to innovate and apply practical sense. Emphasis is more on cramming and getting good marks rather than understanding. So practical matters get a backseat.
It is quite correct that no Indian software company has been able to come out with a world class software application. All we Indians are good at is working for others at low costs and thinking we have done great.
I cannot understand why we get offended by anything and everything someone says about us as a country or a people. The right way is to investigate the statement made by Mr. Mundie. If found to be correct, let us work towards fixing it, if not, we can move on. All this dicussion about pride is counter productive. I personally can give you multiple instances in my college life when I asked interesting questions and was in a kind way asked to shut up in class. That is a cold hard fact that students all over India face on a daily basis. We just like to sweep everything under the rug and that comes back to bite us later.
what mundie said might reflect his thought and should not be taken as a yardstick to measure our competence in computing field.Indians dominate the silicon valley,almost all organizations are filled up with our people.R&D ceners which are being opened here give a right answer to Mr. Mundie.India still commands premium in IT field , thanks to our education system .
We are far better than our western counterparts .... we can build faster, better and with good quality. agreed we are not very well equiped in thoertical computer science ...how many of us really know art of programmig but business software we can kick ass anytime anywhere better than Mundie and Microsoft...:-))))
The main reason for this is our education. Leading S/w firms are only behind students who have scored above 70 % marks in their academics. As per my experience almost 80% of these students are only good in studying.They do not know the outside world. Also many colleges give their students high marks in Internals ,which improves his average. And the subjects followed in engineering are very out dated. we should have a syllabus which is updated frequently and the lectures should be well qualified. Many colleges have lectures who just passed out from the same college. Rule should be made that only Post graduates should teach graduates.
The main reason that the MNCs are flocking to India is because we have a huge young English speaking manpower resource in the age of 18-35 years, 25 % of our population is in that bracket. Our country was never equipped for this deluge, so talking about quality is irrelevant. The MNCs have to be clear what they are looking for Einstein are not mass produced.
I Think what Mundie has been saying is true for some extent. But then there is not the problem only with the Engineer. Our education system does not groove us in specialisation. Instead we are more of generalised engineers who can fit in any field of software development. There should be specialised subject for each student atleast for 1 year of engineering. eg Embedded systems,VLSI,Mainframes.etc. That would definitely improve our Quality.
