From: sajith@athena.mit.edu (Varghese Thannickal)
Subject: Re: Indian software in the spotlight (Was Re: Pressure)
Organization: Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Date: Fri, 8 Jan 1993 02:25:49 GMT

In article <1igs63INN2b6@agate.berkeley.edu>, mvij@ocf.berkeley.edu (Manish Vij) writes:
>
> [ D E L E T E D ]
>
>|>  The head of Texas Instruments-
>|> Bangalore said on NPR last night that the IIT grads he employs are awesome
>|> in their analytic capabilities, far superior to U.S. engineers, and although
>|> were initially employed for cheaper labor, are now supplying great design
>|> ideas.
>
>:) (though i do feel that the IITs are excessively hyped up)
>
>|> According to my dad, this is because the Indian Institutes of Technology
>|> are so single-minded in their approach to teaching engineering: one basic
>|> humanities class followed by straight engineering from all angles, and
>|> homework that combined eats up 18 of the 24 hours in the day. 
 
The success of IIT grads ( and Indian programmers in general ) has probably
nothing to do with the excellence of engineering education at the IIT's or
other Indian universities. In my experience, the IIT curriculum was a lame
attempt at cobbling together many disparate courses into something that 
superficially resembled programs at the foremost Western universities 25 years
ago. A few alterations were made every now and then, but in a disjointed and 
incoherent fashion, depending on the whims of whoever were responsible for 
curriculum development, based on the limited information seeping in about
similar changes in the West. The present day IITian is faced with a large 
number of courses to be taken, some admittedly of very high quality, but many 
of which seem to lack relevance in the overall context of an engineering 
education in that particular field. The system of continuous evaluation of 
students has also been diluted in most instances to a sequence of 'quizzes' 
and 'midterms' that very rarely test conceptual understanding and 
intellectual progress, but rather factual and procedural recall. Adequate
preparation for these farcical instruments of academic measurement often took 
the form of a late night-before binge of intensive memorization ('despo 
mug scene') from the xeroxed class notes of a more motivated brother...
...( more humorous anecdotes deleted) ... . Back to the point.
  
The REAL reason for success in software is the current structure of Indian 
society which encourages the best students to go into engineering fields of
study after high school. Here too there is a definite hierarchy of 
desirability, based on realor perceived employment opportunity/lucrativity, 
with software related engineering  accruing the highest echelon. This being 
the case, the top ranking students in the IIT-JEE and other Indian 
engineering entrance examinations,invariably  go into computer science and 
related fields. Very few top students choose to rebel against a social 
system that has, in their conscious or unconscious view, nurtured them to 
that level of academic excellence. The rise of the Indian software industry 
is directly attributable to this distillation of the best talent from the 
ocean of human potential that is India today. It is a tribute to this talent 
that it succeeds eminently, inspite of numerous obstacles in its path 
including a defective educational system. In a few years time, India will be 
a software superpower, but that status may be acquired at too great an
expense in terms of depth in other important areas of scientific and 
technical endeavour.





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