Why the best and brightest students in India choose to be engineers
cogsciresearch.blogspot.com
cogsciresearch.blogspot.com
(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.)
And if you've ever visited any city in India and driven around, you'll see that these tech schools are heavily advertised on every lamp post, wall, and posting board. It's a self-fulfilling prophecy (tell everyone to be an engineer and they just might do that) and a path of least resistance for those who can run the gauntlet.
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.
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.
I don't have an authoritative answer to your question, but I know that there are marriages where no dowry is involved at all.
Being an engineer always provided a possibility of getting a decent job, but the trend was accentuated after the advent of IT Services companies thriving on outsourced work. This in conjunction with a large number of private engineering colleges setup in the 1990's, meant engineering became an easy ticket to getting a decent paying job. And at the end of the day, money matters especially in a poor country. (Btw I'm an Indian living near Delhi, before someone thinks I'm just trying to bash the country.)
On the positive side, things are changing for better. Post economic liberalization in 1991, there are plenty more opportunities for young (& old) people to earn a good living. Overall, economic development coupled with information revolution are paving the way for this and the future generations to take more risks and do what they want, rather than worry about basic necessities of the life.
I was around 10 in 1991, and I have literally seen things/attitudes change in front of my eyes. (May be everyone thinks the same ..). I am very hopeful and optimistic that more people would now start getting in to different things/professions.
Easy in the sense of "action X leads to outcome Y". Not easy in the sense of "IIT is a party school"!
In US a history or philosophy major can survive, and even run big companies (like LinkedIn) or go for a law school
Money. Respect in society.
Hmm Money isn't fundamental to why people choose one job over another?
I can't see Britain producing engineers with the status of Brunel anymore: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isambard_Kingdom_Brunel
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.
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.
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.
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'.
That was its core thesis.
The internet knows no boundaries or geography, that's why.
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.