
Why the best and brightest students in India choose to be engineers - scritic
http://cogsciresearch.blogspot.com/2010/04/math-phobia-pedagogy-and-choice-of.html
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patio11
Engineering -- specifically, computer programming with the intent of working
for a body shop -- is a reliable path to comparative material prosperity and
financial security in India in a fashion that it is not in the United States.
That is really all there is to it.

(Engineers are not poorly paid in the US by any stretch of the imagination,
but the career choice doesn't strictly dominate e.g. teaching, law, working
for an arm of the local government, or generic white collar labor. By
comparison, Indian engineering salaries were quite recently increasing by 50%
_every six months_.)

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pw
What's a body shop?

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subud
A temp agency:

<http://www.idinews.com/bodyshop.pdf>

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pw
Thank you :-)

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fab13n
Becoming a software engineer at Infosys or Tata is likely to make you several
times wealthier than other "reasonable" jobs in India (and BTW, working in
those huge CMMI-crippled corporations must be boring as hell: I don't think
that fun of working/studying plays a huge role in people's choices).

This is not true in OECD countries (unless you give up the technical career
path and become a start-up founder): taking up an MBA or cardiology will
multiply your odds of becoming wealthy, but engineering will not.

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suraj
Social pressure. Being an engineer or doctor is considered the most
prestigious thing in India.

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netcan
That just begs another why. Any ideas?

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bluesmoon
Engineers get a much higher paying job. Computer engineers (both hardware and
software) get paid 10-20 times as much as other professions. MBAs get more.
Note that even students who do Mechanical & Civil engineering try to get
software jobs. That's where institutes like Aptech and NIIT come in (they're
now global franchises, but they started as tiny training institutes in an
Indian city). I once met an auto-rickshaw driver who had a Bachelor's degree
in science. He started driving the rickshaw because 2 years after graduating
he couldn't get a job. If he'd done engineering, his college (or training
institute) would have placed him somewhere.

When I graduated high school, and was in line to submit my college
application, I heard a bunch of people mention that they'd applied for
engineering and medicine and would take whatever they got.

Another reason, specific to guys is that it increases their chances of getting
a bride from a "good" family, and also the potential dowry he could get.
Software jobs tend to take you abroad more often than other jobs, and, believe
it or not, there are some communities in India that will raise dowry prices
based on the number of US immigration stamps you have on your passport. Yeah,
officially dowry doesn't exist.

Lastly, some people study engineering simply because they're really good at
it. I've encountered hundreds of people who really had the aptitude to be
engineers.

Disclaimer: I'm Indian but I studied Physics, Chemistry and Mathematics. No
one would give me a job after I graduated even when I cleared all interviews
and written tests.

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netcan
Does the man get paid the dowry in all of India or is it reversed in some
parts?

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bluesmoon
Technically dowry is a gift given by a father to her daughter when she gets
married. In-laws exploit this saying that once the girl "marries into a
family", everything she owns now belongs to the family.

I don't have an authoritative answer to your question, but I know that there
are marriages where no dowry is involved at all.

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arethuza
Perhaps it is something with societies in ascendancy - Britain in the 19th
Century, the USA in the 20th.

I can't see Britain producing engineers with the status of Brunel anymore:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isambard_Kingdom_Brunel>

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blizkreeg
The engineer/doctor story is more of a middle class phenomenon in India. If
you look at rich and/or elite families, business or finance dominate their
choice of profession. The poor sadly, have no access to even basic education.

Education is/was the ticket for middle class families out of their
"predicament". To them, (arguably so) few disciplines require an intellectual
rigor as much as Engineering or Medicine do. It is like a badge of honor for
them. Being a Historian might be regarded interesting out here in the US -
over in India, it would be regarded more as "...ah poor thing, he didn't
amount to much". The arranged marriage system driven by tradition and on-paper
worthiness more than anything added to this - an engineer or a doctor's value
shot up instantly in the market (but I hear things are a changing)

Eventually, I think it is market-driven. Lack of opportunities elsewhere force
the rest to take up professions that serve more as an insurance policy than a
passion. It is changing though.

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scritic
Thanks for the comments, everyone! I don't really disagree on the "external
factors" (getting a job, providing for your family, etc.). I think their role
is overwhelming, and I say that in the post too. My point is simply to
consider the role of pedagogy (and contrast the pedagogies of non-mathematical
subjects in high schools in the US and India) and wonder if that has a role to
play in the fact that so many "bright" students in India end up being
engineers and doctors.

Perhaps, there's also a relationship between the external factors (probability
of getting a job, job prestige, etc.) in a developing country and the style of
pedagogy in schools that cater to the middle class, although at this point, I
can't really think of a mechanism that makes things the way they are.

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bluesmoon
I don't believe pedagogy has anything to do with it. I've had classmates who
were really good at history and civics but only one of them went on to become
a lawyer. The rest of them either became deck officers in the merchant navy or
computer programmers. Both professions associated with a lot of money and
foreign travel.

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asimjalis
India and Indians have a long tradition of mathematics and science.
Mathematicians like Srinivasa Ramanujan (1887-1920) have iconic status.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Indian_mathematicians>

~~~
lolcraft
Europe (Euler, Gödel, Erdos, Hilbert, Einstein) and America (von Neumann,
Shannon, Feynman) have comparably long traditions and cultural icons. I don't
think lack of them is the cause.

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wheaties
"In particular, I am interested in understanding why the best and the
brightest high school students in the United States usually choose not to
become engineers or scientists..."

Really? I guess my experience was different wherein I saw most of those who
couldn't cut the math/science classes going different routes. I wouldn't
consider those the "best and brightest" by any stretch of the imagination.

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kraemate
1 word. money.

On a more serious note - opening of the IITs allowed mathematically gifted
students to become sought-after engineers who emigrated to the US and made
loads of money (atleast for the people back home).

Thus it's all relative, engineering as career option bloomed because of IITs
were set up. Other disciplines haven't had the same 'luck'.

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avinashv
Ignoring the external factors in a country like India, where familial and
social pressure are extremely driving forces, doesn't present a great answer
to the question in the title of this submission.

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argv_empty
It also seemed odd to me that it said, more or less, "Pedagogy in both places
is the same, so let's examine the effect of pedagogy on student interest."
Holding some factor constant won't tell you anything about its effect.

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akgerber
It claimed math/science pedagogy is the same, but other pedagogy is different
inasmuch as everything else is rote thus boring.

That was its core thesis.

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edo
With the internet Indian students can overcome their innate geographical
disadvantage. Students in western countries don't have to.

The internet knows no boundaries or geography, that's why.

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pw0ncakes
1\. Most people have figured out that large companies (esp. banks) reward
those who are able to finagle a way to the top over those who are simply good
at doing their jobs, which means that it's economically optimal to spend one's
college years making connections and learning how to socialize with rich
people. It's hard to do this if you're in a demanding major.

2\. Most people with the talent to pursue science degrees would actually
rather be star professors making $150k in complete autonomy than Wall Street
star traders making $20 million; at that level, money's fairly irrelevant.
However, if look at the median outcome, finance wins. The mediocre Wall Street
person still reaches $1 million/year by age 40 or so, while the mediocre
engineer is lucky to crack $100k, and the mediocre professor is lucky if he
has a job at all.

3\. A lot of Indians and Chinese want the option of coming to the US, at least
temporarily. We need engineers, so it's easier for them to get into the
country.

4\. Grade inflation, especially in elite colleges. As notorious as the Ivy
League is for grade inflation, this is mainly in the humanities (and
economics, because they need to have watered-down economics courses for the
wannabe banker-douches) and far less prevalent in the sciences. Math courses
give a B- or C for mediocre work. Humanities courses give a B+ or A- for
mediocre work. The result is that a lot of people walk away thinking they're
"just bad at math" because of the B in linear algebra, because a B in their
humanities departments is a bad grade, whereas a B in the math course is
average or even above average.

