India Graduates Millions, but Too Few Are Fit to Hire

[Phanuthier]

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000...Tabs%3Darticle

Very interesting article. Seeing a large India influence in the San Francisco Bay area, I can certainly see parts of this. Its really too bad as a lot of good, qualified potential gets crushed and buried.

Business executives say schools are hampered by overbearing bureaucracy and a focus on rote learning rather than critical thinking and comprehension. Government keeps tuition low, which makes schools accessible to more students, but also keeps teacher salaries and budgets low. What's more, say educators and business leaders, the curriculum in most places is outdated and disconnected from the real world.

[WilsonFourTwo]

Interesting find, but I think the WSJ is a bit too dismissive of India on this one.

I agree that India has (and will continue to) pumped out a huge volume of mediocre technologists. They may not end up filling the ranks of NASA type agencies, but they're still well positioned to take the average "help desk" style job away from a "Better" educated American.

The logic almost sounds like "Don't worry America mechanics, they learned by working on 20 year old cars, they couldn't possibly know how to fix a flat tire". (Oversimplified example, obviously)

[afc wimbledon]

I wonder how many companies in the US could hire 3000 fluent Urdu or gujerati speaking americans?

Hell I doubt you could hire 3,000 americans that could speak french well enough to man a call center.

[username]

A lady I use to work with apparently had a software engineering degree from one of the better universities in India. I found it rather strange that she could barely understand an if statement.

There is probably something to that article.

[Table 5]

Having tried to work with Indian developers has left me extremely frustrated. Anyone who's worked with people from there will tell you that they only deal in quantity, not quality. If there's a problem, they won't give you one guy who knows what he's doing....they'll throw 10 guys on it and hope the problem goes away.

[CaramonLS]

Originally Posted by afc wimbledon

I wonder how many companies in the US could hire 3000 fluent Urdu or gujerati speaking americans?

Hell I doubt you could hire 3,000 americans that could speak french well enough to man a call center.

Considering English is one of the official languages of India, this reply does not make sense in the least.

[Ducay]

My work outsources a number or menial tasks to our India offices...generally they throw 3-4 people to do the work of 1 employee here in Canada can do. Its not a knock on their intelligence or anything, just the work environment over there is based on the training levels and employee costs......so the quantity/quality thing is fairly true.

[Regorium]

Working with Indian engineers is the most frustrating experience of my life.

Also, taking courses with hordes of Indian engineers is the most ridiculous thing ever as well - the rampant cheating, constant whining, and complete lack of respect for the lecturer (eg. taking calls in the middle of the class IN the lecture room).

This article does not surprise me, nor do I have any sympathy for their situation.

[FlameOn]

Originally Posted by Regorium

Working with Indian engineers is the most frustrating experience of my life.

Also, taking courses with hordes of Indian engineers is the most ridiculous thing ever as well - the rampant cheating, constant whining, and complete lack of respect for the lecturer (eg. taking calls in the middle of the class IN the lecture room).

This article does not surprise me, nor do I have any sympathy for their situation.

Totally agree there, one Indian engineer I've worked with had a problem with a specific piece of equipment in the lab one time. So... I told him to power cycle it. The guy waits 10 minutes, comes back and asks me "how do I do that?"

I was like... um... "you can flip off the power switch on the equipment, pull out the cord or just flip the power bar". Guy goes away fro 10 minutes, comes back and asks me... "which power bar? "

I'm just like.... "um... the one connected to the piece of equipment you're having trouble with" . Obviously at this point I'm concerned, so I go to the lab to check things out... Turns out the guy has unplugged every piece of equipment from the power bar and then proceeded to unplug the power bar from the wall. Come on, the guy has a masters degree too??? WTF

[afc wimbledon]

Originally Posted by CaramonLS

Considering English is one of the official languages of India, this reply does not make sense in the least.

Indians all grow up with a native language of their own, many then learn english as a second language as it enables a country with 1600 languages to communicate with each other.

How many in the US speak 2 languages?