The New York Times talks about getting your degree and still being umemployed and highlights the fact that most unemployed college graduates in India lack three essential skills,
- Bad English/Poor accent(Poor communication skills)
- Rote learning
- A general lack of soft skills( group interaction,body language etc)
While the overall message of the article is well conveyed, the author states that the development of the desired skills are only to be achieved by those attending IIM’s and IIT’s. (Quoted below)
But the chance to learn such skills is still a prerogative reserved, for the most part, for the modern equivalent of India’s upper castes — the few thousand students who graduate each year from academies like the Indian Institutes of Management and the Indian Institutes of Technology. Their alumni, mostly engineers, walk the hallways of Wall Street and Silicon Valley and are stewards for some of the largest companies.
Similar articles always seem to brand Indian educational institues into two categories. The IIT/IIM lot and the others( and usually ‘others’ stand for everything bad about the indian education system). I disagree on that aspect of the article, just because you went to IIT does not mean that your accent is impeccable and you are pitching creatives in madison ave to the fortune 500. I know a lot of folks who went to IIT and were brilliant analytically but had trouble with basic grammar. A lot of these articles tend to see the colleges as black and white and seem to miss the grey. The grey are those colleges where they accomplish 60%-80% of developing an employable graduate. For ex: A lot of colleges in the major metros fall in this category. The students speak great english have semi decent analytical skills and seem to do just fine finding jobs.
I do have to agree with Anand(the author of the article) on the fact that colleges in India do need to place emphasis on the soft skills. Academic capabilities carry far more importance and students generally seem to lack the back-slapping,personable natures usually needed to get ahead in the corporate world. Somebody needs to fill this gap. Aptech/NIIT are passe now, Language/personality schools are in. There is a huge market opportunity for somebody to step in and start offering courses with emphasis on the communication and creative sciences.
December 2, 2006 at 5:41 pm
Can’t agree more with you Sunder. Soft skills is an oft-skipped subject in most schools. There should be more emphasis on this thru the growing years.
As for Anand’s article, he is right in saying there is a big divide in the types of jobs a student can get into; but he is way off course in stating that IIT/IIMs are state of the art! Hardly baked article!
December 13, 2006 at 7:33 pm
Skills, yes we need it. But what about the “purpose”? The purpose – What to do in life? How you can contribute to the society? What’s the purpose of studying and learning from an esteemed institute? I think it does not matter where you study, what actually matter, is to realize the purpose of your life especially with respect to society at large and how you can contribute to its development? And Indian education system is still missing this aspect, otherwise all silicon valley chaps would come back and start serving this nation or say take part in its development , not just by money but by actions?
Whats the point of having great skills and analytical mind, if they are of no use in the development of a nation. If these skills are being used in getting huge salary packages, spending it in malls and disc and not contributing a single rupee for the development of any needy person then it is a real wastage of skills-no matter from where you have got it-IIM/IIT or any other institute?
December 14, 2006 at 8:28 am
That’s a very good point albeit more a global problem. Indian schools/colleges are getting there but the playing field has to be leveled. Right now the schools and colleges seem to be blindly aping the west in terms of practicing culture but fall short of encouraging creative/independent thinking.
January 23, 2007 at 5:34 pm
I agree with Kapil. There should be a purpose. Moreover soft skills are necessary. To achieve the purpose capabilities are needed. the purpose be society development or bridging the corporate world gap or just finding a job.