When I visit India I see the big steps that are being made. Some things are changing quite rapidly. One of my pet peeves, however, has been the dilution of education. I have no issues with the dissemination of knowledge but I do think that the industry that has grown up around it has negative consequences. For the educationists it is the money; for the students a way to climb up to a well-paid job. Of course, there are excellent institutions and I am proud to say that my school and university days were spent in two of the finest. Nevertheless, at the other end of the scale there are egregious examples: so-called colleges in a crowded backroom with a teacher who has just gone through the same course a few months earlier, helping cram for the upcoming exam.
Kevin Barnes, who now lives in Bangalore, India relates the difficulties in finding good programmers.
An example of the explosion in the number of educational institutions: when I was done with school and was looking for an engineering college/university about 30 years ago, Kerala had 1. This was the REC (Regional Engineering College) in Trivandrum. Now there are about 70. No doubt, some of them are good but I cannot believe that they are all of a high standard.
20 years ago BA, BCom and BSc degree holders were relatively common; 10 years ago MA, MCom and MSc were a dime-a-dozen. Talking to some of them did not give me the impression that they were masters in their fields. Now, of course, it is BE, BTech and a curiously named title, MCA (Master of Computer Applications). Of the students that have gone through this system I have met some world-class ones, but I cannot believe that the masses being churned out are close to that category. Where is it all going to lead to?
7:33:04 AM 
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