Craig Barrett Takes On Vivek Wadhwa In The Tech Education Debate
techcrunch.com
techcrunch.com
This was the best comment in the entire article.
When my wife and I were in grad school (math for her, applied math for me) we were both interested in teaching. But the system put a lot of extra hurdles and disincentives in our way:
- Certification required an extra year and a half of lame classes, at great out-of-pocket expense.
- Teaching pays significantly less than engineering, and has less room for advancement and intellectual improvement.
- Teachers don't get a whole lot of respect from parents, students, or society in general.
- I spent some time in a public school classroom as a specialist, and was surprised by the lack of professionalism from teachers and administrators. I had an administrator warn me that if I didn't hold specific political views, I'd get yelled at. Sure enough, one teacher angrily demanded to know why I wasn't voting for her favorite candidate (though I'd never said anything to her about it -- that info was spread to her behind my back). It was made very clear to me that I wasn't personally welcome in that environment.
- Teaching (at least in the public schools) is heavily unionized. Advancement doesn't seem to be directly merit-based. Seniority, politics, and being in with certain "cliques" seem to be important.
After grad school, I spent four years teaching STEM concepts for a museum with a large K-12 outreach program. Based on teacher, parent, and student comments and on performance evaluations, I'm pretty sure I would have been a great classroom teacher. But it simply wasn't worth the extra time, money, and effort to get a low-paying, low-advancement job in a politically hostile environment.
These considerations are NOT what inspired mankind's greatest scientific thinkers and philosophers to devote their lives to their pursuits. The major theme to stress instead should be "the study of reality and truth". We all hunger to know "The Truth". Just ackowledge this basic human tendency then. That's all it takes.
India especially is pissing away its advantage of having a culture that places a high regard on education. At my home we had days set apart in a year where we literally worshipped books! (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Durga_Puja#Kerala)
If relative wages in engineering rise, more students will major in engineering fields. Workers and students in non-tech fields will buy a few books, study after hours, and teach themselves to code.
The main problem is that for high ability people, engineering pays less than Wall St, law, medicine, and certain types of government work. Out of my college class, almost no one studied engineering or went into engineering. Instead they went to Wall St, Med School, Law school, or Washington DC.
If society wants to increase technological development, it must end the financial bailouts that create such great profits for bankers, and simplify the legal code to put the lawyers out of work.
Yesterday, I had replied to Wadhwa's tweet saying that he was mistaken in this comparison.
In India, cricket players and movie stars are adored and idolized. OTH most Indians wouldn't even be able to name the top scientists/engineers in the country (let alone idolize them).
I think Wadhwa is pointing to a genuine issue (of rock stars and football players being more popular than engineers or scientists), but making bogus claims to raise fear (of Indian or Chinese competition) isn't the right way to address this issue - especially when it should be clear that India is very much alike the US in this respect (though it is "cricket player" instead of "football player" ...)
Adoring stars is something found in almost every country. It isn't what differentiates India and US: we both have stars that we worship.
What matters is coming down many notches at the everyday job level. What kind of everyday jobs do we(media, textbooks) idolize most? In the US, its firefighters and cops. In India, it's engineers and doctors.
- Indians in India do enjoy(or say Worship) Cricket, but out of a population of 1+ Billion ONLY 11 Indians make it to the International team and that's where all the money is (or atleast used to be since India started IPL since last year)
- In the US, the population is way less and you have multiple sport avenues (Football, Basketball, Baseball, + many more) with multiple teams. So the success factor in pursuing a sports dream is more practical. And even if you don't reach the top, you can still find a descent job with a BS degree, assuming you completed. On the contrary, in India you are pretty much doomed if you put all your energies into sports and it does not pan out your way. The Ratio of the Number of Educated Population to the Number of Jobs is very high.
The top scientists from BARC, ISRO are very well known are literally treated like national heroes. And so are the 11 cricketers from the Indian National Team. Most people don't know the name of Hockey Players(apparently our National Game), ... at the most only 1 person per sport (other sports) might be known by people.
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I noted another point from the article.
Craig Barret is very right when he says American Kids run after Interest and Indian's go more after the money. It's the same population and competition issue. If India had a 'normal' population, I am pretty sure many would have pursued their interest rather than the Success Formula ...
Engineering (preferred IIT) + MBA (from IIM) = Nice Paying Job
PS: In HS = You NEED to have Physics, Maths, Science to be eligible for Engineering School. This is the same as Freshman level material we do in colleges out here.
Too be honest I think if you(most Indians) end up doing an MBA right after Engineering without any work experience, what is the whole point of slogging through Highschool to get into the Top Engineering Colleges to only end up being into Business School. And Yes, similarly applying to Grad School in US is another way to chase that dream and then apply for PhD. On the contrary my american friends in Undergrad here ONLY pursued a masters/phd if they had a genuine interest in it.
Now with a lot of Immigrants coming, it's indirectly creating the same problem we have in India. Too many educated people, so more competition for the number of jobs and hence people born here might also have to someday stop focusing on their dreams(sports, music, etc whatever it be) and live in a cut throat environment making sure they have a job, which is really sad.
You must be kidding.
This is obviously just an opinion (since I can't point to data), but I'd say that the number of people in India who know the name of a scientist at BARC or ISRO is a tiny fraction of the number of people who know Sachin Tendulkar (cricket) or Shahrukh Khan (movies)
Cricketers and movie stars have millions of fans in India. I'd think that the average Indian wouldn't be able to name a single scientist currently working at ISRO or BARC
The same could be said for non-research jobs, but tech development, support jobs too.