

Private Universities in India provides you just a Degree- A student rant - akarambir
http://nainomics.blogspot.com/2011/11/welcome-to-indias-higher-education.html

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egalois
Hi I wanted to put this up:

I _was_ in a very very reputed AIEEE university in one of their fit for
nothing dual degree programs. And trust me most assignments and project work
comprise of plagiarized and glue code. It had more than 75 % compulsory
attendance, after which grade drops happen.

There are some good students...some really good students... who do well in
really getting at the essence of programming.But everyone else is lost.

You find disinterested people working on projects. And if you are in one dual
degree program and work on other field's projects ( on our own ) you get
letters from the dean and your department head reprimanding you to invest your
time in your field. BTW, all these fields I am talking about are about simple
and elegant software.

Result : I quit.

I am pursuing a B.Sc Degree in IT from SMU-DE. Yes it is not the same as from
the above institution. But it lets me participate in community development
better. It gives me time to participate in SPOJ, TopCoder, Directi's
CodeChef.And it doesn't prevent me from participating in GSoC. It doesn't
threaten me and stop me from attending NASA's Summer Internships. And most of
all, I don't have to succumb to their policies.

I find solace from learning through MIT OpenCourseWare, Stanford's Online
Classes in AI, ML and DB. My github and other projects feed my resume. Yes,
there is a unrest at home about where I am headed. But I know where I am and
where I am headed.

I was clear that this institution was not worth 1.5 lakh per annum from my
parent's life savings. I quit, in my second year.

But trust me. If you move out, you will have to face _immense_ mental pressure
from the family. And if you can work from your college, do so at all costs.
Moving out will create new problems that you cannot predict now.

~~~
egalois
And btw, this is not the case with private universities alone. You find
students with a very very small Body of Knowledge even in very reputed places.
They were good with their High School Education, and not with undergraduate
interests. Perhaps, this is because fear is a major incentive to pass. And
they have no real good incentives to learn.

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kapilkaisare
Been there, done that.

But if you're seriously considering dropping out, good luck with finding a job
in the sort of competitive market you're in. With more than a thousand
applications per job listing, the recruiters will first cut out the non-
degreed/non-engineers. Then you're looking at a select few (like Zoho) who may
take you in for a marked down pay which gets you no where.

Or you can try to make it on your own, put in several man hours of effort into
an idea and push it to market. If you do manage to get a release out, know
that your odds of success have improved from nothing to one in a hundred.

Or you could simply suck it up, maintain a minimal profile at college
necessary to get your degree, and work the nights on getting a real education.
Then you're in a (IMO) far better position, life-wise.

Stop cribbing about something you have little control over, and focus on doing
what you can to improve things for yourself, and if you see fit, for others.

~~~
akarambir
I do and I've tried various methods to be more productive about my learning
and projects. Still the college stuff really pisses me off.

~~~
geekam
I think frustration about college can be good as well. I have always used that
frustration to put my time to better learning and projects. Each time you
encounter those problems, think how can you make things better. Start making
things better for yourself, like start your own group for similar minded folks
in your college/school. Maybe you will arrive at solutions that may help build
better educational resources for people who actually want to learn and not
just clear exams.

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doosra
I understand your frustration. I too graduated from such a private college
with a CS degree in 2003. Here is why I think you should complete your degree:

\- You are being forced to study the core areas in CS. You will probably soon
specialize in your work/research, so learn the core areas when you still have
the time.

\- Unless you have already created exceptional products, regular employers
will not consider you unless you have a degree; these employers are a good
fallback if nothing else works. The degree is a baseline to avoid being
filtered out.

\- If you want to go to graduate school to do research, either now or in the
future, an undergraduate degree is essential.

\- Getting a B.Tech isn't hard. Put in the minimum effort if you want, but it
isn't tough to pass, nor is it a time sink.

Yes, the teaching can be unimaginative, professors may strictly adhere to a
syllabus, and the exams test rote memorization, but one can still be
stimulated in this environment. I would unceasingly ask questions to fully
understand algorithms being taught in class, often challenging professors (and
finding holes in the thought process). The database class helped me understand
normalization and other ideas of good DB design (and their rationale), which I
used for my web projects. A queuing theory class helped me understand
performance of a system I later built.

There is no doubt you need to go beyond just getting the degree. Do you have
fantastic ideas for products? Maybe a bit of freelancing will help? I created
websites for clients abroad while doing my undergrad (just get a low bandwidth
internet connection from a mobile company for this). I interned with
companies/organizations during the summer. For my final year project I wrote a
simd+cluster version of a program that I ran on all the computers in the
department's lab (and tripped the ups!). I also realized the importance of a
degree and tried to stay close to the top of my graduating class.

The challenge is to stay motivated to get the degree, while also finding an
outlet for your passion. Both can be done. Freelance during the semester
working nights and weekends; work with a company during the summer;
participate in CS competitions in your region; find a local conference in an
area of interest and publish a paper (this isn't hard!). It's really up to you
to get motivated and rise above the rest.

While I sometimes wish I had done my undergrad elsewhere, I was eventually
able to work in an area of my interest. I went to graduate school abroad and
am now working in a research department in industry doing what I love.

~~~
akarambir
thanks for the motivation. Yes I'm working on some ideas with some friends and
would soon release a web app. And i'm doing freelancing for my friends and
relatives.

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mattgreenrocks
As Mark Twain said, never let your schooling interfere with your education.

Nor should you let your schooling make you cynical, or drain you of your love
for learning, or kill your ambition. Because you will continue to encounter
resistance in the form of people, culture, and institutions that seem to exist
solely for perpetuating mediocrity and fake work. They may operate that way,
but that doesn't mean everyone does.

Steve Jobs quotes are practically cliche now, but, stay hungry. That tenacity
is what will make you if you channel it into creating something.

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eerpini
Well my friend, here are a few things you should know: 1\. If you are
interested in research, you should approach professors/find out what they are
doing etc, even at the worst of schools, there is always someone doing
something worthwhile. 2\. As it looks like you are already following hacker
news, keeping up to the posts on the front page itself should give you a lot
of ideas and things to tinker around with. 3\. Believe me, undergrad education
is useless, everyone does it to get a degree. What really matters is the
environment around. The people around you will help you learn more at school
than the course itself does. 4\. Ask yourself these simple questions, if the
answer is a "no", try working towards making it a "yes" : Do you have a GITHUB
Account ? Have you tried getting your hands dirty with any OSS project ? (not
necessarily code, configuration ? testing ?) Do you follow journals in your
area of Interest ? Which courses do you love at school ? Have you supplemented
the course with some extra reading ?

These are just a few questions that can get you started, for example, the
course for algorithms/data structures at most schools in india sucks big time,
why not follow it up with a reading of AOCP or the MIT algorithms book. And
yes as someone already mentioned, concentrating on work rather than cribbing
about the system will take you better places. BTW, I did my undergrad from a
so called "reputed private university" in India too.

~~~
akarambir
thanks for the encouraging words. Yeah I've a github account that i setup just
some time back. Also doing some code- work and helping some friends on a small
side project. I'm pretty much good at python and C language. Now I'm reading
others code on github and learning from them.

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jayaram
My 2 cents of advice.

Do not drop out unless you are filthy rich. It doesn't work in an Indian
environment where companies and jobs depend on what your under graduate
college is and your qualification. Companies only visit BIG and reputed
colleges and no matter how bad you are, you might be lucky in getting selected
for the job. That is what you are paying for, its for that damn job and not
for the research and education.

But I think you are going in the right direction. If I look back at myself 4
years ago, I am in the same position as yours. Its good that you are looking
at the MIT and Stanford's courses. They help you a lot in learning new
concepts. Also make yourself comfortable with programming. at the end of the
day, it boils down to how good you can apply your concepts and code stuff.
Find some interesting projects on Github. Fork it and work on it. you might
not be successful at your first attempt. But you will learn a lot of things on
your way. Involve yourself in various open source projects and hackers club in
your local city and I'm sure you will be successfull.

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geekam
I understand your frustration like many others on this forum. I graduated more
than a decade ago, when Web was still in its early stage(s). If I were going
to an engg school today, I would have similar thoughts as you are having right
now.

I will not advice you to drop-out or in other words, throw a degree out of the
window. I think @doosra does mention that you can just do minimal in college
to get a degree and I think you should do that.

There are open courses from some of the best universities around and
especially now that Stanford has Spring courses online, free; there is no way
you should give up.

Spend more time learning and doing. You just don't only have online courses to
see but also, the time is ripe to build things. We have an awesome platform
and some good problems to solve. Maybe students like you will come up with
some, who knows.

Happy hacking!

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akkishore
You say you have finished 3 semesters of your graduation. But I think 4,5,6
semesters are where you learn most of the core of CS, atleast as per Indian
curriculum. Give yourself some time.

Start a CSE club at your college. Organise lectures with the help of your
serniors. Or each one of you can start learning about a technology and start
sharing it with each other in the meetups. Organise programming contests,
organise hackathons. You can also try and collaborate with local LUGs and get
lectures conducted. Your institute will slowly start seeming to be full of
buzz where there is lot of knowledge flow. And then it will all seem great.

Try and

~~~
geekam
In some cases, 'learning' CS has a different meaning in India. In fact,
learning itself is a very different philosophy at this moment. Even in
Engineering schools, learning is mostly bookish, rote and is all about
clearing exams to get grades and degree(s).

So, it may happen that the OP might get interested in later semesters, I doubt
it. I have been there more than a decade ago and I don't think a lot has
changed.

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ennovates
As the author mentioned- the main problem is spoon feeding. This should be
checked in early childhood and school education. Moreover a professor won't
waste his time if students are not ready for learning.

~~~
akarambir
then why are professors taking full salaries. For sitting idle?? It is their
duty to make interest of the students. If a student have chosen Computer
course. This means at some level he likes it. Then a professor can make that
student to think more about it and learn whys and whats of computers

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aashu_dwivedi
Been there my friend, I too passed out from a so called reputed private
University.and too bad I came to know about hacker news only in the last year
of my college :(

~~~
aashu_dwivedi
and add to it , My University restricted the internet Usage to 20 MBs,didn't
had much money to afford my own internet connection :(.

~~~
akarambir
thats why I'm still there and pursuing my degree. They don't have restrictions
on bandwidth or speed but for some time blocked some very useful sites.

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karambir
thats whats is happening to me also. Though we don't have attendance problem,
but un-interesting teaching from professors have led to me not paying
attention to me college academics and drama. do it your own. and best of
luck!!!

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intoxin12
Are you talking about Amity University

~~~
akarambir
yeah i'm

