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The Indian education system
-Has it come of age?

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 Panel Members
• Prof. Shan Balasubramaniam,
Groupleader CS/IS
• Prof. Suman Kapur
Faculty Biological Sciences
• Priyamvad Deshmukh
Student
• Jyothi Menon
Student

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 First Blood
• How do you rate the Indian education system
globally?
a) Good at the primary and secondary level but fizzles out at the higher
level
b) Certainly one of the best c) Great in some areas
d) Stands nowhere
• What do you think has brought the focus back on
Indians?
a) IT b) The Great Indian Brain
c) Yoga,mehndi and chicken tikka d) Aishwarya Rai
• Do numbers alone decide how good an educational
system is?
a) Yes,definitely b) To a certain extent
c) Quality should be the sole criterion
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First Blood-Prof Shan B.
• How do you rate the Indian education system
globally?
c)Great in some areas
• What do you think has brought the focus back on
Indians?
a)IT
• Do numbers alone decide how good an educational
system is?
c)Quality should be the sole criterion

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First Blood-Prof Suman Kapur
• How do you rate the Indian education system
globally?
a) Good at the primary and secondary level but fizzles out at
the higher level
• What do you think has brought the focus back on
Indians?
a) IT b) The Great Indian Brain
c) Yoga,mehndi and chicken tikka d) Aishwarya Rai
• Do numbers alone decide how good an educational
system is?
c) Quality should be the sole criterion

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First Blood-Priyamvad
• How do you rate the Indian education system
globally?
a) Good at the primary and secondary level but fizzles out at
the higher level
• What do you think has brought the focus back on
Indians?
a) IT and c) Yoga,mehndi and chicken tikka
• Do numbers alone decide how good an educational
system is?
b) To a certain extent

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First Blood-Jyothi
• How do you rate the Indian education system
globally?
a) Good at the primary and secondary level but fizzles out at
the higher level
c) Great in some areas
• What do you think has brought the focus back on
Indians?
a) IT
• Do numbers alone decide how good an educational
system is?
c) To a certain extent

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We are the best!!!

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Is America the World's 97-lb. Weakling?
- Fortune Cover story

• "Can America compete?" is the nation’s new No. 1

anxiety, the topic of emotional debate in bars and
boardrooms, the title of seminars and speeches …
The question is almost right, but not quite. The
problem is .. U.S. workers unable to compete with
those in China—or India, or South Korea. The real
question is, "Can Americans compete?"

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Fortune Cover story-…

• “We’re not building human capital the way we used

to.Our primary and secondary schools are falling
behind the rest of the world’s .Our universities are
still excellent,but the foreign students who come to
them are increasingly taking their education back
home.As other nations(India,China etc)multiply their
science and engineering graduates ..ours are
declining ,in part because those fields are seen as
nerdish and simply uncool.And our culture prizes
cool”

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 What the stats say..

400000
350000
300000
250000 no.of engg
undergraduates
200000
produced per
150000 year
100000
50000
0
USA INDIA CHINA

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 In Focus…
• Virginia governor Mark Warner wanted to hear advice
on how to make American high schools better.
Warner, the outgoing chairman of the National
Governors Association (NGA), had made "redesigning
the American high school" the theme of his year in
charge of the group. So for the NGA’s annual
meeting in Des Moines last weekend it only made
sense for him to bring in experts from China and
India—two countries known for their hordes of well-
educated youngsters.

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What do you think is the best about the Indian
education system?

5%
11%

16%

68%

The competition
Emphasis on ethics and values
The rigour
Nothing at all
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Aryabhatta’s blessing…

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Why is it that Indians are excelling only in IT?

Indians are good

at math
30%
35%

Other fields
require
infrastructure

35%
We provide cheap
labour

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Candid Camera

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They said it!!
• Ex Vice Chancellor of Delhi University,
Dr Deepak Nayyar’s views on IIT’s –
“they are icing on the cake, but when
the cake is crumbling what can icing
do?”

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The Christian Science Monitor
reported..
• In a sign of growing pains within India's high-
tech economy, the government slashed the
intake capacity of engineering schools by
more than 25,000 seats across the country's
private university system. A dramatic
shortage of engineering teachers with
doctoral degrees prompted the cuts. Various
experts estimate that India has only 10 to 30
percent of the qualified instructors it needs.

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Dr U R Rao,in his report on technical
education in India, submitted to AICTE

• Distance education scheme.. The AICTE can

pay decent honorariums to some of the best
engineering brains in the country, ask them to
prepare 15 or 20 lectures on subjects that are
clearly a part of the engineering syllabus,
record these lectures on a disc and then
broadcast them to the whole country ..

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 If you go abroad for higher studies what is it
that might make you come back to India?

10% The booming

16% Indian
economy

Patriotism

40%
34% Family
commitment

Dal-Chawal

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 Quote Unquote
• "Give me six hours to chop down a tree,
and I will spend the first four
sharpening the axe," was how Abraham
Lincoln once famously described the
purpose of education.

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SrevatsSpeak

• Is there a gap?
Yeah..there is a gap and the industry people will not
miss an opportunity to remind you of that if you are
a fresher and claim to have done something in your
institute in terms of a project or dissertation.

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SrevatsSpeak
• How big is the gap?
It is certainly not small. The work in the industry is primarily
oriented towards clearly defined objectives in terms of
product development. In the academic world, since not all of
us get a chance to work on sponsored research work, there
are no clearly defined objectives. It is the same as the
difference between learning a subject for understanding it
and learning it for making marks. There is a huge difference
though, in the kind of projects and research work done in
US.Most of the projects are sponsored by big companies and
moreover most of them are defense projects and the
importance that is associated with such work is no
comparison.

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The Three legs of the Tripod
• The Academia (universities), the
Government and Industry

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The industry’s view..
• According to industry research from
International Data Corporation (IDC),
over 21.7 million IT positions will be
vacant and need to be filled in recent
years in the Asia Pacific region, if
corporations want to meet their
business goals.

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The govt.’s view..
• Dr U R Rao, the former chairman of the
ISRO in his report on technical
education in India, submitted to the
AICTE says.. “when 3.5 lakh engineers
are turned out every year, do we realize
that in four years' time, we would have
increased our population of engineers
by 15 lakhs? What will we do with
them? “

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Steps taken..
• NASSCOM is addressing the skills issue
at the university level by sponsoring
university job-ready programs so that
new graduates will be better prepared
for opportunities when they emerge
into the job market

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contd..
• Meanwhile, there is plenty of evidence that
the U.S., like India, will generate technology
jobs for which there will not be enough
qualified applicants.The U.S. private
sector,however has little interest in promoting
increased job-ready skills for American
students, as such students would inevitably
claim higher salaries than their Indian and
Chinese counterparts

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Direct Dil Se..

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