

Signaling and Indian Higher Education - barry-cotter
http://theoryclass.wordpress.com/2009/08/07/signaling-and-indian-higher-education/

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deepakjois
The author has some good points, but IMHO he does not see the complete
picture.

The IIT-JEE (Joint Entrance Examination), the examination used to recruit
students into these institutions is arguably the most grueling experience for
a high school kid anywhere in the world. Thousands of students all over India
spend upto two years of their lives doing _nothing_ other than preparing for
these exams. There are many side-effects to this phenomenon.

First, these exams are not like the regular school exams which essentially
promote rote learning. The problems are designed to make you think. Two years
doing nothing but solving physics and maths problems hones your problem-
solving ability to a very high degree.

Second, the pressure to succeed is immense and the competition is cut-throat.
Anyone who has successfully been through two years of such an ordeal will be
able to handle stressful and tense situations a lot better. This kind of a
mindset is a natural fit for a lot of careers that these kids will eventually
go on to take up, thereby increasing their chances of success.

<flamebait> At this age, an average high school kid in the US or UK is
probably having a lot more fun, trying to get drunk or get laid :) (if you go
by all those teen-flicks and TV Shows!) </flamebait>

Related Reference : See this Al-Jazeera documentary on a guy who runs an IIT
Training school in India's poorest and most lawless province Bihar -
[http://english.aljazeera.net/programmes/witness/2009/02/2009...](http://english.aljazeera.net/programmes/witness/2009/02/2009237166461635.html)

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Dilpil
The questions sure seem to be better than whats on the SATs:
[http://www.iitjee.org/iit-question-papers/iit-
jee-2005-main/...](http://www.iitjee.org/iit-question-papers/iit-
jee-2005-main/iit-jee-2005-maths-main.html)

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UsNThem
I agree with you. India's education system is too complex to be quantified by
the traveling westerner - however often he/she has visited India.

I think the mushrooming of such vast numbers of Management and Tech Institutes
reflects the aspirations of the generation. Considering India's population ,
its apt that we have such large number of tech / mgmt learning centers. Yes
even though they are not of worthy "ivy league" quality. Imagine if we had
large numbers of "Institute of philosophy & history " - what would we do with
so many philosophy/history majors? I am sure we currently have sufficient
number of such graduates.

The real challenge for India is to step these private "Bob" Institutes to
something which is not just world class but world beating !

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biohacker42
_why hasn’t the market unraveled? Why aren’t employers making offers to
students when the results of the joint entrance exams are announced?_

I suspect there's an oversupply of workers. But I also think it's just a
matter of time until the entrance exams results are sufficient for a lot of
employers.

 _Why hasn’t competition driven out `bad’ institutions?_

I suspect a shortage of supply in education and oversupply of demand for
education.

 _Last, what if quality of faculty research is unrelated to the ability to
educate undergraduates?_

It isn't! But you don't go to Harvard just for the book learning, mostly you
go there to rub elbows with the old money.

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maheshs
People come to India for their vacations for couple of weeks; they see India
and then comment without understanding the complexity of India. They Compare
India with US, UK etc. Every such writer point out problems (Easiest task in
the world) but no one try to give single solution. They even don't understand
India is having such a diversified culture with such a large population. If I
replace population and diversity of India with US, i don't think even US can
survive

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jerf
People come to X for their vacations for a couple of weeks; they see X and
then comment without understanding the complexity of X. They compare X with Y,
Z, etc. Every such writer point out problems (Easiest task in the world) but
no one try to give single solution. They even don't understand X is having
such a diversified culture with such a large population. If I replace
population and diversity of X with Y, i don't think even Y can survive.

(I'm not saying you're wrong, maheshs; I'm actually agreeing, just in a larger
context, and it's worth highlighting that larger context. In fact, as an
American I observe that I can't fully understand the US; I seriously doubt "an
Indian" has India all figured out, either. 300 million is a _lot_ of people,
and India's got another multiplicative factor on top of that.)

