Scott Adams believes that he has an answer, or at least one of the answers.
Dilbert Blog is one of the most if not the most interactive blogs on the net.
The song writing started out by Adams asking the blog readers to write catchy phrases which almost mean something.
A band weeded the response from the readers and based a song with them.
And now we have a video:-
(more…)
Yesterday GoI came up with a foolhardy 4000 CR (1 billion USD) scheme of subsidizing the interest on the study loans for all Indian students.
GoI has been recently collecting educational cess on all the taxes and financial transactions. This was a welcome move, because in a country where half a billion souls have never attended schools/colleges now the Human Resources Ministry has almost infinite funds to educate the masses. Or this is what I had thought.
All the tolls collected via cess went directly to the center. While Primary education was funded by state government and panchayat/local administration (Madhya Pradesh) So in reality, although a huge war-chest was build, the spending on education hardly increased over the past 3 years.
Another problem faced by the HRD ministry was that budget was to be presented in a few months. Traditionally, any department that does not spend the funds it had been sanctioned in the previous budget is penalized in three ways:
1)It has to answer why it had not been able to plan and execute efficiently
2)The funds are taken away from it
3)In the next year, the department will get lesser funds.
I have a feeling that this scheme is nothing more than a plot to squander away our taxes.
If government wants to do something for an “All Inclusive Growth”, then open a thousand primary schools, open vocational and technical schools. The higher education is already very subsidized (a engineering graduate’s first year salary would be more than adequate to cover for his entire educational expenses).
Also if you look at the fine print, it covers only the undergraduate/post graduate study loan taken from Nationalized Banks. Now if Government wants to help the poor but deserving students, then isn’t providing a scholarship/full tuition waiver a better way to help them. After all its general knowledge that students work harder and perform better when they get study grants, for these students need to display good academic achievements for continuance of the grants.
In short there is nothing new or significant in the scheme.
This article in CNN describes some of the statistics about the correlation between good schools and colleges and entrepreneurship. It also tries to do some explanation
When it comes to success in the technology arena, entrepreneurs’ choice of schools isn’t nearly as important as what they study, and for how long.
That’s the down-to-earth conclusion of a report released in June by the Kauffman Foundation. Founding a tech company doesn’t require an elite university degree, whether it’s in the U.S. or anywhere else.
The study bases its findings on interviews with 144 Indian, Chinese, and Taiwanese immigrant company founders culled from surveys of 1,572 companies in 11 tech centers across the country.
“It doesn’t matter which university you get your degree at,” said Vivek Wadhwa, the study’s lead author. “What matters is the level and the field of education.”
The survey found that more than half of foreign-born entrepreneurs came to the U.S. solely for an education. Close to 40% came for work. Fewer than 2% came with the express purpose of starting a company.
Immigrant founders of U.S. tech and engineering companies are highly educated in what educators call the STEM subjects — science, technology, engineering and mathematics.
That was expected, says Wadhwa, a former entrepreneur who is Executive in Residence at Duke University’s Pratt School of Engineering.
Almost all immigrant founders in the study — 96% — had bachelor’s degrees. Forty-seven percent had master’s degrees, and close to 27% had doctorates.
Of those degrees, 75% were in STEM areas. Engineering accounted for 44% of the degrees.
Over half of the immigrant founders — 53% — earned their highest degrees from U.S. universities. But no top-tier university in the U.S. or abroad got particular credit for producing tech entrepreneurs.
That was a surprise, Wadhwa says. It’s good news for less prestigious schools and the students who attend them.
“From the U.S. perspective, M.I.T and Stanford didn’t have any advantage in developing successful entrepreneurs over some small university in the Midwest,” said Wadhwa.
The situation is similar in India, where tech success is practically synonymous with the subcontinent’s seven famed India Institutes of Technology. But the research shows that the IITs graduated only 15% of the Indian tech company founders.
“IITs aren’t what we feared,” Wadhwa said.
Institutions ranked below the IITs are exulting at the news, which got wide coverage in the Indian press, he says. Researchers at Duke and the University of California, Berkeley, conducted the study.
It follows a January report showing over a quarter of U.S. tech and engineering companies started between 1995 and 2005 had at least one foreign-born founder.
That a top-tier university education isn’t necessary for success shouldn’t be surprising, says Arthur Schwartz, deputy executive director of the 50,000-member National Society of Professional Engineers.
“It is absolutely the kind of education that the individual receives rather than the institution that provides it,” he said.
Education in certain fields are often a tried-and-true path to success, Schwartz says.
“Historically science, technology, engineering and mathematics have been social levelers for getting ahead for all groups,” he said.
Those looking at the tech professions from the outside in also agree that a particular university pedigree isn’t everything.
“There are certain critical thinking and higher order skills that can’t be transmitted via education,” said Forrester Research (NASDAQ:FORR) analyst Sam Bright. “So where you go to school is not the be-all and end-all.”
Whether study findings will affect investors who fund entrepreneurs is the bigger question, he says.
“The real test of this report is how open-minded angels or venture capitalists will be to expanding their filter beyond the brand of a particular school,” Bright said.
It also addresses what’s sometimes forgotten in the immigration debate, says Raman Unnikrishnan, dean of the College of Engineering and Computer Science at California State University, Fullerton.
“The discussion tends to focus on the negative aspects of immigration,” Unnikrishnan said. “Often immigrants are evaluated in terms of employment rather than entrepreneurship.”
But foreign-born entrepreneurs make a significant contribution to the U.S. economy, he points out.
“Immigrant-founded firms have created wealth and employment opportunities for all Americans,” Unnikrishnan said. “When political heat comes to bear, people forget that aspect of immigration.”
There are culture-specific reasons why foreign-born entrepreneurs are successful in the U.S., according to Unnikrishnan.
If the Indian tech and engineering graduates noted in the study had remained in India, they could not have taken the same entrepreneurial paths, he says.
“The U.S. allows failure,” Unnikrishnan said. “Older cultures like India do not.
“That is a profoundly important contribution that the U.S. education system and culture imparts to these bright foreign graduates who come here as immigrants.”
Everytime I pay a tax, I also pay a huge educational cess…. this sum was promised to be used in spreading education to the country’s 1/3 of the population which cannot read or write.
But here is the ground reality
Since the situation has not improved since 2004-2005 and has only worsen since then…. Where did my money go?
Don’t tell me it went in creating new IITs, IIMs, or AIIMS with the sole purpose is to create an army of professionals who would pay taxes and help US Government reduce its Social Security deficit. Because… we have not created a new one either in the past couple of decades.
I believe that everybody is a kid… and kids have curiosity. Now when your kids asks an awkward question, you can
1) Say NOOOO, talking about such things are banned… you will know all this when you grow up. (if you have handled kids then you will know what it usually leads to)
2) Or Tell him the truth, and while you are doing it: Tell him what a responsible and moral behavior is and what are the consequences.
If you opt for the first, How can your kid know the:
1) What is right and what is wrong.. what is socially accepted moral behavior.
2) What are the medical consequences of error. (STD, AIDS)
3) How it can impact your future? (pregnancy, early marriage, being forced to undertake responsibilities you are not prepared for etc.)
4) What is safe what is not?
5) You need to reinforce in the kids that they have a right to say NO, and not succumb to peer-pressure.
6) What qualifies as sexual harassment by a pedophilic relative?
In the USA, obesity is a tell-tale sign of poverty, but in India its the large number of offsprings… often more than they can take care of. The parents are not able to invest in the child’s future and hence condemning them to perpetual poverty.
1/3 of the Indian population cannot even read and write…. How do you think you can increase awareness in their kids?
In a society where a female is often reduced to a Cooking Machine and a Sex Toy, How do you plan to tell her her rights?
How can you tell a couple that
1) “Agreed that a child is a God’s gift, but a dozen of them is a curse”
2) What are the benefits of a planned pregnancy?
Well Even College educated kids are no better:
I know a newly married couple (husband an engineer, wife a Post Graduate student) who conceived within 2 months of their arranged marriage. Now someone tell me how does she plan to attend school while she is carrying? Unfortunately I cannot blame the couple for not thinking through properly… “after all ignorance is a bliss.”
I have a confession to make: I do not know even even the names of the STD. So if I ever catch one, I am 100% sure it will be too late before it is diagnosed.
Many countries in Africa lost an entire generation due to AIDS… Is Indian Government also preparing a similar stage for population control?
I am a firm believer of German model of education. It might have its demerit, but I truly respect its spirit.
The German law says that every citizen has a right to pursue both primary as well as higher education at the institute of his/her choice. As long as he fulfills the required prerequisites, then no educational institute can bar him to select any course/degree he wants.
I also admire the US educational system.
Anybody can open a university. There are cases when the universities were opened just as a memorial of their dear departed son. This mechanism ensures limitless supply of seats and colleges actively compete to enroll the best talent. The courses need to be modified each year (no this years question paper is not a rehash of the previous 5 years question paper) so that they attract prospective students.
The fees are high, but the univs offer generous scholarships, TA and RAs to ensure that deserving candidates are not able to afford it. Scholarship is not seen as a grant, but as an investment by the college. It is to attract the brightest minds that can potentially turn into brand ambassadors for the University and also enhance the learning and experience of the whole batch.
However Indians have come up with a unique higher education system:
A license raj crippled with the curse of Eklavya Syndrome.
more on education system on
We have returned to the same old Gurukul system where by limiting the access to education, the higher castes can maintain its stature. We have created a small rank of elite colleges who are respected by the society not because of the knowledge it imparts, but because of the rigorous selection process.
good education is not picking up the brightest handful of the students wasting their 4 years and then boasting about their success. Its should be like a book… anybody who has time to go through it is eligible.
I see education as an enabler who prepares the youth to take up challenges and drive the development of the nation. However we end up subsidizing the education of a bunch of pomp ass IIT/IIM graduates who have huge egos and the only mission in life is to migrate to USA never to come back.
When you talk about education, people talk about reservation. I say, open 50 more colleges so that nobody who aspires to be educated is denied of it. Nobody talks about reservation in govt run primary schools.. why? simply because there are more seats than the people aspiring to take them.
For the country’s GDP to grow at 10%, the supply of educated professional workforce should increase by at least 15%. If you say that there should be a World Class university in each district of this country: I would say…. For a population of a billion and the world’s largest source of youth this is too little.
However the reality is:
1) In last 40 years we created only one IIT (Guhathi). And at least in this decade there are no plans of having a new campus.
2) We create 20 new NIT by renaming existing RECs. A new IIT by renaming University of Roorkee. Somebody tell me how does this eyewash matter?
However I am also against government allocating a bulk of the money I pay through Educational cess to subsidize Colleges rather than educate the 30% illiterate citizens we have. Opening private operators in high school education, medical care has definitely increased the cost of these services.
But I am ok with it. After all my government has limited funds and these private players have ensured that there is quality in the system. Indian Higher education on the other hand is rotten because private players are so much restricted.
So the only solution we have is to open up Private Universities. Allow FDI in education. And I thank Arjun Singh for giving his approval.
I have always tried to write about deficiencies in our education system
choice and passion
gurukul
pre-british education system
But now i feel that it should be entirely scrapped and rebuilt. That is the only way we can modernize it and align it with the requirements of the present day India.
Firstly, policy makers are Babu’s who have never stepped outside their office. Hence they do not know what the world is. They just think of churning out more clones of themselves as the way to educate India. They always talk about opening a 100 more IIM, IIT etc. But is it what India needs?
1) IIT typically cost government 600 million each year to maintain and yet 90% of the students either move abroad or join IT industry (and hence unlearn what was taught to them)
2) A typical IIM graduate is like an IAS for the private sector. He thinks the world owes them a living. They will not work in traditional industries, sales or marketing jobs or production jobs which MBA is all about. Instead they will always long to migrate or look for a number crunching desk job at an I-bank on wall street. I can never understand in what world is tracking stock Indices requires an MBA skills.
Vocational studies. Unfortunately we are so much engrossed in churning out bots for Call centers and IT/ITES industry that we forget to have a cadre of skilled labor. In India getting a simple crane operator is almost an impossible job. You need to pay him 15k + overtime still you will be lucky to get an applicant.
The Policy Makers Babu do not see their kids attending so they never concentrate on them. Unless a company has its own training program, it is almost impossible to get a experienced factory worker. Probably that is the reason why manufacturing sector is lagging.
I was looking at an ITI syllabus.
All cast iron furnaces have been closed 30 years ago. yet a large part of the curriculum deals with it Why?
Composites/ plastics/ handling CNC and automatic machines is never even mentioned.
IT/Software will not fuel the growth for long. For a country to have a perpetual growth all areas need to be focussed.
Open up a 100 more schools to train factory workers and machine operators….. and not a call center operators.
2 years ago I started cooking for myself. However I had to abort the entire project in the midway, because my stomach could no longer take the torture of digesting the food cooked by me. I am not alone, typically a guy tries to avoid learning how to cook for as long as he can afford to (by hiring a maid on monthly basis or on permanent basis through marriage) Indian Girls are on the other hand literally forced to learn cooking and serving.
However whenever I eat some really delicious food, it is very likely that a guy-chef or the male member of the household has prepared it. One of the best hospitality experiences are when I am served by males.
I am not a MCP who is trying to prove that males are superior in a female activity. What I am trying to say is… most guys cook/serve not out of compulsion but due to passion. While most females cook/serve because they have to.
The only difference between an Average performer and a Top performer is simply PASSION. To excel in life, one needs to pick up an activity which he/she loves, and pursue it with complete dedication.
Combing back to my rambling on education:
India has tens of thousands of graduate engineers. But even then most IT companies find them sub-standard. This is because most Indians pick engineering and software industry out of compulsion and not out of choice.
“You can take a horse to the water but you cannot make it drink”
One should always go by the spirit of the law rather than the wording. Recently Karnataka government threatened to shout down over 4000 schools in and around Bangalore.
Reason: They have permit of running Kanada medium while they were actually teaching English medium.
1) If Government wants to promote Kananda, then it should open up more schools. Shutting down schools that are already running won’t promote Kanada in any form.
2) Since these schools were not getting any government grants (in fact they were paying huge sums for license etc.) State has no business in interfering with there proceedings (unless of course the education and facilities are sub-standard)
3) Majority of these schools lied in the suburban area, where people from lower middle class used to send their wards for quality education. So denying them English education might force the parents to shell out huge sums for the already few education.
4) There is a market for English medium schools so private schools cater to the niche. Closing these schools would only worsen the situation. Remember it will be the poor who will suffer, the rich will pay some donation and continue to send their kids to the choicest schools.
5) Do they want some kick-back to regularize these schools? More the controls, more inspector raj, more the corruption.
When will government realize that it has done a shoddy job in providing government sponsored primary schools to the masses? Subsidizing college education at the expense of primary education does not benefit the average Indian. Still 30-40% of the children have no access to schools.
Private schools are doing a great service by providing education without government having to spend a single penny (out of infamous educational cess). If you cannot assist them, then at least do not hamper their work.
well not free exactly, but definately most economical. Look at education:
1) Pre-school education: the best education of 2-4years kids is under the supervision of the mother or relatives (free nanies). But people spend 40 thousand a year to get their schools in all the fancy playschools. I often wonder is it for the kids, or for the pride and ego of the parents. I even heard of a theory which said that parents are so much pissed of from changing diapers and constant nagging that they are more than happy to dump their kids. One thing is true these playschools always charge more fees than any decent highschool or college. Probably because 3 year old are being taught about future technologies and being imparted skills which no college graduate can even dream of!
2) School education: If you look at school with best board results, theie fees are always affordable. While the school which is the most expensive always has below average results ( and many of them do not even impart education beyond 5th class) These expensive private schools will take admission interviews of a 3year old and their parents. What is it for, what purpose does it serve? I have no idea. But I have never met a person who aced in the primary school as well as in life.(discounting people from places where there was no compitition)
3) College education. The most wonderful thing I discovered recently was that ISB school of business charges more tution fee per month than any of the ivory business school. Comparing 2.4lakh charged by IIM for a 2 year course with 17lakhs charged by ISB for a 1 year course make the whole structure ridiculous, but ISB charges more fees than Stanford, California, Berkley and MIT. Also the school is only 4-5 years old and is still establishing itself, I shouldnot comment on the quality. But probably who can pay so high fees, already have big offices and father’s businesses to run. So they already might be at the top positions.
Even in graduation, I found fees at IIT were 16thousand per semester, while most of the private engineering colleges were safely charging upto 80 thousand per semester (with much less faculty, and facilities). Then for those who could not afford even this 16thousand, there were more scholarships than applicants. So if you fell in the merit cum means criteria, you will get a full tution fee waiver and a monthly stipend. For the rest there were affordable student loans, which banks were more than happy to lend. So good schools and college always ensure that you do not pay through the nose for education, and no bright student is denied education because of economic reasons.
Inspired by this, I thought of checking US schools, before generalizing. The top 20 schools(engineering and comerce) always have many times more scholarships, research assistanceship, tution fee waivers then the rest of the schools. Also the highest fees is always getting charged by the mediocre colleges. Call it a price of mediocricity, but next time if someone cribs about the expensive education, you might be safe to assume that he is not very bright.
