Taken from Quora:
Deepak Mehta
working professional since 2013
[What are the reasons it was said that most of the Indian software engineers are unfit for development?]
India has a quality problem in education and not a quantity problem. If you look at the data maintained by AICTE (All India Center for Technical Education)
and focus on the 2016–17 numbers for Engineering and Technical courses, you will find that there are huge number of empty seats and that:
* More than 50% of seats go unfilled
* And only 40% of graduating students get placed
Every year, about 1% of institutes are closed due to not meeting the minimum requirements set by the Council (67 institutes closed last year).
One needs to remember that the Indian education system has a huge infrastructure gap. 15 lakh young people are set to graduate from engineering every year, yet only a handful of them get will do so from good colleges (IITs, NITs, BITS, Anna U, etc.), about 30–40,000 (2–3%). A lot of bogus colleges are cropping up to take advantage of the students’ dilemma and make money.
So when such colleges that are just a husk and a lot of fluff churn out graduates who technically have a degree, are they going to actually be employable?
I studied from BITS and graduated with a Computer Science degree. I had no prior coding experience, having taken up both Maths and Biology in 12th. When I started, things were already difficult since quite a lot of the folks in my batch had the basics of programming nailed down.
In my first year, I only had one course pertaining to programming (focusing on C). And it was not taught well. In the second year, we had a bunch of them - algorithms, data structures, and database systems. None built on what was taught in the first year. Everything was theoretical. There were courses on microprocessors and Electrical sciences I loathed but had no other choice than to study. I can understand how they are peripheral to the field of programming, but they aren’t crucial. If I was to graduate with a coding job, I needed to focus on “how to” instead of “what happens at the back-end”, “what is the history of programming etc”.
By the time the 3rd year rolled around, I was screwed beyond recovery.
Our coding examinations were paper-based. In a world where everyone has access to compilers and debuggers, and there are answers to all basic issues that programmers face, there is no need to memorize the syntax. Coding is as visual an exercise as it is theoretical, but the focus was always on the latter.
So, India’s premier private college churned out a useless graduate with a degree who can’t code to save his life. I shudder at how bad things are in shell colleges who do not care about education, whose teachers are incompetent, and whose student intake is mediocre in quality.
Deepak Mehta
working professional since 2013
[What are the reasons it was said that most of the Indian software engineers are unfit for development?]
India has a quality problem in education and not a quantity problem. If you look at the data maintained by AICTE (All India Center for Technical Education)
and focus on the 2016–17 numbers for Engineering and Technical courses, you will find that there are huge number of empty seats and that:
* More than 50% of seats go unfilled
* And only 40% of graduating students get placed
Every year, about 1% of institutes are closed due to not meeting the minimum requirements set by the Council (67 institutes closed last year).
One needs to remember that the Indian education system has a huge infrastructure gap. 15 lakh young people are set to graduate from engineering every year, yet only a handful of them get will do so from good colleges (IITs, NITs, BITS, Anna U, etc.), about 30–40,000 (2–3%). A lot of bogus colleges are cropping up to take advantage of the students’ dilemma and make money.
So when such colleges that are just a husk and a lot of fluff churn out graduates who technically have a degree, are they going to actually be employable?
I studied from BITS and graduated with a Computer Science degree. I had no prior coding experience, having taken up both Maths and Biology in 12th. When I started, things were already difficult since quite a lot of the folks in my batch had the basics of programming nailed down.
In my first year, I only had one course pertaining to programming (focusing on C). And it was not taught well. In the second year, we had a bunch of them - algorithms, data structures, and database systems. None built on what was taught in the first year. Everything was theoretical. There were courses on microprocessors and Electrical sciences I loathed but had no other choice than to study. I can understand how they are peripheral to the field of programming, but they aren’t crucial. If I was to graduate with a coding job, I needed to focus on “how to” instead of “what happens at the back-end”, “what is the history of programming etc”.
By the time the 3rd year rolled around, I was screwed beyond recovery.
Our coding examinations were paper-based. In a world where everyone has access to compilers and debuggers, and there are answers to all basic issues that programmers face, there is no need to memorize the syntax. Coding is as visual an exercise as it is theoretical, but the focus was always on the latter.
So, India’s premier private college churned out a useless graduate with a degree who can’t code to save his life. I shudder at how bad things are in shell colleges who do not care about education, whose teachers are incompetent, and whose student intake is mediocre in quality.
