India's education issue
Last week, Ravi my friend from India called me to discuss about some education courses. During the conversation, he shared with me a current issue in India's education system. He said: “For many years, the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) has been considered as one of the best universities in the world. This school consistently produce graduates who are ranked among the world's best engineers, and successful entrepreneurs. The school is well known for the tough entrance exam that students often said that they have to prepare for many years to get in. Most students will tell you that to get into IIT is the “ultimate dream”. Even after get in, the academic training is so competitive that it force students to work extremely hard, applying critical thinking and teamwork to survive. Students are also required to live on campus to spend more time to study with minimum disruption (Few family visit are allowed). The result: The best graduates known all over the world for its technical achievements and innovations. It was the reputation of IIT that bring the IT outsourcing to India. It was the IIT connection that many of its graduates have founded top companies such as Infosys, TCS, Wipro, Mahindra etc., and created million of jobs, bring billions of dollars to India. All IIT graduates are always proud of their schools.”
“However, one of their best and well known graduate, Infosys founder and chairman Narayana Murthy complained to newspapers about the deteriorating quality of IIT graduates recently. He voiced the concern that IIT had lost its vision and had lowered its standards to get more students in. He criticized some IIT professors who open private tutoring for rich students to help them get in this prestigious school. He said: “Because of these special training class, the quality of students entering IIT has gone lower and lower. Somehow many students get through the entrance examination but their performance is not good anymore … as they go to work or go to higher education in the U.S they do not reflect the IIT quality anymore.”
“His comment has created a huge responses from the public. Many believe that prestigious schools like IIT must preserve the quality at all cost. However, they were angry that someone with his reputation dare to “challenge” the education system of India. Many Indian said that “Even there are bad things happened here, but a well known Indian like him should not say it. It makes India looks bad and damage the reputation oversea. It may even hurt the outsourcing business.” For whatever reasons, newspapers, TV, blogs and websites attack him as “traitors” and “pointing the finger at the national pride” then the most well known figure in India, the “Bill Gates of India” is under attack”.
“Recently, the issue on education improvement is sidetracked into a debate over whether Infosys is a “software slum, body shop” where people like Narayana Murthy took advantage of Indian software workers. The term “Body shop” is a very bad term applied to company that makes business out of exploit poor people. The most famous writer Chelan Bhagat wrote: “It is ironic that someone who make money out of poor people who runs a body shop and call it hi-tech, make comments on the quality of IIT students and Indian's education system.”
“Of course, all the headline newspapers immediately focus on the debate whether Infosys is indeed a body shop. The “Times of India” newspaper runs a survey over whether Infosys is a body shop with over 80% say “Yes” and less than 20% say “No”. Mr Bhagat immediately comments: “My view is correct, people in Infosys also agreed with me. Why judge our students, why bring student into this mess. We are proud of our students, they are doing well. We are doing well …our education system is doing well. I was right from the beginning. Infosys is a body shop, it has been doing it illegally everywhere. It lied to everybody by sending workers to work oversea using the H1B visas and exploit them. Infosys should fix their problem before complain about the quality of our schools or our students ”
My friend Ravi commented: “It is so sad, we want to improve our education system. We want to keep our quality tradition that we are so proud of. It is good for someone like him to say something but somehow people do not want to face the fact that India is running out of skilled workers. The current education cannot produce skilled workers anymore, even top schools also changed by lower the standard. If nothing happen, the economic miracle will not last long. Few years from now without qualified workers, IT outsourcing will go elsewhere than it is too late to do anything. Without a good education we cannot continue this growth”.
Sources
- Blogs of Prof. John Vu, Carnegie Mellon University
