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Without a doubt all the years of exam preparation in the teenage years come at a steep cost. For a young person in their teens to not have the time to reflect, be self-aware, and explore what life has to offer, is necessarily a failure of the system as a whole. But that is the reality in India, and if students must trade all that for studying hard then it simply reflects their (I would argue correct) perspective on the potential rewards of a solid career and securing your future from the certain chaos that awaits the uneducated or even poorly performing students in India.

In that sense I would say it is unfair to claim that Indian students graduating from an IIT can't do this or that; it is actually an achievement in and of itself that they managed to get there and out without turning out to be entirely dysfunctional. While I would not argue that competition in India (in the context of these national examinations) is much higher than the competition in the West in various spheres (sports, sciences, tech, etc.), the reality is that the breadth of options to a good place in life is extremely limited, and the competition is rather concentrated to a few possibilities. You cannot opt to become a YouTuber, pro basketball player or a digital nomad if you're born Indian. There is essentially a bunch of careers in science, engineering and medicine, and a few top institutions for each of these ends, whose pedigree can get you very far, and failing that, there is much uncertainty to be faced. And most Indian students, while unable to articulate this, clearly feel these pressures and act accordingly.

I think you make a good point. The only issue, an important one at that, which I have is the last statement: "And most Indian students, while unable to articulate this, clearly feel these pressures and act accordingly."

Students are younger and much more curious about the world and about what to make of their lives. I would argue its the parents that feel these pressures and transfer that onto their kids. And I don't believe it is simply to give them a good livelihood: both rich and poor parents want their kids to get into these elite institutions. And that is a huge problem.

I grew up in India. While I lucked out that I was naturally inclined to find science and math interesting, a lot of the people I went to college with found it absolutely boring and even torturous to go through their coursework, which was deeply saddening for me personally. I would ask them why they did it if they wanted to do other things? Usually the answer would be because their parents wanted them to be an engineer.

No one in any country can really opt to be a YouTuber or pro basketball player. I mean a few people manage to do it through a combination of talent, luck, and hard work but they're so few as to be statistically insignificant from a career planning standpoint. On average US and Indian high school students have approximately the same chance of becoming an NBA player: ≈0%.

For a young person in their teens to not have the time to reflect, be self-aware, and explore what life has to offer, is necessarily a failure of the system as a whole. But that is the reality in India, and if students must trade all that for studying hard then it simply reflects their (I would argue correct) perspective on the potential rewards of a solid career and securing your future from the certain chaos that awaits the uneducated or even poorly performing students in India.

The degree to which your sentences contradict each other seems remarkable to me. Surely, the student who relentlessly prepare for these exams also don't have time to reflect on whether or not their activity is worth it and so X being "simply their perspective" seems meaningless. Similarly, it would seem to be a failing of the system that there is no other path to success here.

You claimed a contradiction but didn't present it. And you go on to assert exactly the things that I said. I am saying that the system failed the students by forcing them to prepare relentlessly for these exams, which the students come to realize is really the only path to success, robbing them of some of the aspects of a normal childhood.

If the system / economy were capable of providing a more varied set of jobs like acting opportunities, regular gigs for bands, apprenticeships in various blue collar jobs, etc. then people will be able to choose professions that better match their interests and skill sets. Why force someone who likes to work with wood into a degree in engineering or science. This is largely what is happening in India.

I am not saying that there are no actors or bands or bike mechanics in India. Rather, it is assumed that everyone needs a degree from college and even if this is an entirely ridiculous proposition for many people (based on their interests) and they endure four years in college doing something they don't enjoy in some of the formative years of their life.

So the people who might have benefited from an apprenticeship or taking a year or two off from this career sprint suffer the most, and the final allocation of people to jobs is dismal (the fact that hundreds of thousands of Indians work at call centers is a symptom). The system fails by not providing such kinds of alternate opportunities at the scale that is necessary for a country so huge.

Finally, all middle income Indian parents will continue to pick some career in a STEM discipline for their kids very early on, preventing any investment of time in discovering their interests, keeping this carousel spinning.

What you're witnessing is the contradiction between real education (designed for learning) and credentialism. The truth is that the world is facing a massive crunch. Billions of people are struggling to get out of the circumstances they're trapped in. Getting a credential and getting a professional job is seen as one of the only paths out of the mire.

People who are desperate have no interest in free thinking. Their goal is to escape. That's it.

Ironically, I think it is seen as the only path, because it is marketed as such. Education is big business in India, and there is a banner advertising a trashy "college" on every corner. The quality is rarely great, yet the price is relatively steep. It just pushes people further into poverty, because the education fails to generate the opportunities it promises.

> there is a banner advertising a trashy "college" on every corner.

Right. In the computer field, for example, private "institutes" offering "post-graduate diplomas" are a dime a dozen, in every city, in the downtown as well as suburban areas. The standard signboards or ads for them show that they teach "C/C++, Java, .NET, web design, ASP.NET, Oracle, AutoCAD, HTML/CSS/JavaScript, ...". And it's mostly former "graduates" of the institutes that do the teaching, with no real life experience. As for the virtual version of these, I regularly get contacted by training companies (middlemen) for conducting courses for clients on Python, Linux or other skills I have. Many of them turn out to be shady in their practices and I have to fob them off.

Credentualisn hasn't gotten so bad that if I see a resume with certifications, I take that as a negative signal when I am interviewing candidates.

On the other hand, I've done a few certifications in my day but mostly to force myself To learn something. I usually leave the certifications off of my resume because of the stigma. I will talk about projects that I've done using the technologies.

Credentialism was so bad in the 90's that people did exactly that. It's bound to come around again.

Its definitely a thing in cybersecurity. The more credentials someone has, the less they are likely to know

I am curious what do you think about Coursera certificates. For example Coursera (Deep learning specialization)doesn't allow you to complete assignments and projects of the course without subscription. Also it just feels good to have a token of your weeks of effort. Would you reject someone's resume if he showed this certification?

I didn't say I would reject their resume, I said it would be a slightly negative signal.

That being said, I just got my AWS Architect Associate certification this past weekend. The entire journey of me getting it, wasn't about the certification. I already had a job and probably by the time I am looking for a new one, I will have to renew it.

It forced me to learn about platform that I was just starting to build on and I was able to talk the talk - that's very important when you are an "architect" by name and/or responsibility.

In 2009, I did the same thing with respect to the MS architect cert - I took 6 tests got the certifications but by the time I was looking for a job, I had let them expire. I was transitioning from being a C/C++ bit twiddler to being an "enterprise developer". It forced me to learn about the technology.

In both cases, the certifications were about learning, not the certifications and in both cases, I was able to apply what I learned on the job. I put the projects on my resume - not the certs.

I would say the same thing about the Coursera certs. If they force you to learn and allow you to apply that knowledge to a real world project, preferable on the job but at least with a side project, it doesn't hurt.

It's a lot like when I was training to run a half marathon. It wasn't about the race, it was about the training. After I did them two weeks apart, I was never motivated to do that distance again.

I also broaden this to any place where metrics are involved. People optimize for the metrics instead of doing what the work is fundamentally supposed to be accomplishing. Else, you'll be left behind by the metrics chasers.

Reminds me of an anecdote Richard Feynman had in his book on the Brazilian education system [1]. Basically, the students could memorize crap from books but didn't really comprehend what they were learning, such that when Feynman would ask a question such as "if I hold a glass of water in front of this picture, what will it look like?" they couldn't answer. But if he asked "What is the refractive index of water?" they would answer instantly.

[1] http://v.cx/2010/04/feynman-brazil-education

Yes... It's also worth being able to see this "other" in the mirror.

Chemistry education research describes US pre-college chemistry education content as "incoherent". A challenge when teaching high-school stoichiometry, is students not viewing atoms as real physical objects.

... I've had repeated conversations of the form "What do you think of this alternate way to teach X, which seems to yield a deeper understanding?" "Nifty! But... my students take the MCAS [high-stakes exam for medical school] soon, and all they need to know there is [rote-memorized superficiality]. Instruction time is short, and I'd be doing my students a disservice to spend time doing better."

... Plug-and-chug is a thing. Among teaching staff too. A widely-used text, repeated revised, for years had a problem 'apply the idea gas law to <conditions which would make it a solid> Argon'.

... Innumeracy is pervasive in society. There's more than a half century of journal letters from professors complaining that their physics/geology/other PhD candidates lack a quantitative feel for the field. http://bionumbers.hms.harvard.edu/ started with one graduate student realizing their own lack, and trying to do something about it.

... A five-year old wishing to know what color finger paint to use for the Sun, had best not ask first-tier astronomy graduate students, who pervasively get this wrong. Of the few local outliers, as many learned it in a seminar on misconceptions in astronomy education, as in their "successful" astronomy education. Asking a follow-up question of "what color is sunlight?" often elicits as double take, as two rote-memorized inconsistent factoids collide, apparently for the first time.

You can do good astronomy research, without an informed five-year old's knowledge of Sun color. Years ago, a front-page NYTimes article went by, accurately reporting(!) a claim... that the Universe is green. Some folks working with spectra, had for outreach pushed them through some buggy open-source color code, and lacked the basic understanding to recognize the result as nonsense.

The then Brazilian education system was capable of training for rote regurgitation. But not for research. The US system is capable of training for research. But not for numerate multidisciplinary understanding. As is perhaps needed, for example, to create non-wretched science education content.

So as we look at the dysfunctional memorize-and-regurgitate of the Indian education system, it's worth remembering that we're facing similar challenges^W opportunities for transformational improvement.

This is an accurate observation on the IIT students. A student in an IIT is an demonstration for their will power to sacrifice their social life in their teens to know all the common problems(past years exam questions) by repeated practice. The one thing that makes harder to work with IIT students is they feel entitled forever and feels they belong to a higher caste. That is why its always best to form teams with only IIT graduates. Also another important thing to note is IIT as an under graduate is much tougher to get in to rather than as an IIT post graduate.

They seem efficient and ingenious. It's clear that they're optimizing for their incentives. They're incentivized to pass the test, so they come up with these brilliant schemes for cheating. I can't even get three friends to agree on a place to have lunch, how much organization, skill, and leadership does it take to cook up a class-wide cheating scheme? How valuable would that skill be in the workplace?

Good points in general.

>What's funny, however, is that if you walk past an Indian shanty town, you will find examples of (often illegal) innovation at every corner, from stolen electricty to rigged water meters etc - usually concocted by people with little education. The innovative mindset exists in the heart of Indian society,

Yes, very true. Seen stuff like this myself. A couple of examples:

1. When living in Bhopal (city in central India) in teens, I used to frequent auto mechanic shops to get my bike or jeep fixed. Over many such visits over years, I was often amazed to see the way they innovated and managed with less resources, scrounged, adapted, etc., to get parts, to fix things, etc. I remember multiple cases where they were fixing a vehicle problem and needed a rod or wire or screw, and would just look around a bit, and almost inevitably would find some piece of metal nearby that fit the need, and make use of it, maybe with a bit of tweaking, such as filing, bending or hammering it. Of course, in a mechanic's shop you expect parts and scrap to be lying around, but still, it was uncanny. In North and Central India they use the word jugad a lot (some spell it jugaad, and it has a Wikipedia entry too, IIRC), for this ability or approach (not just related to mechanic's work but for anything in life), and that is what inspired me to name both my blogs "jugad", since the broad topic of both is software innovation. The older one, jugad's Journal, which was at jugad.livejournal.com, is not available now, after LiveJournal was acquired (except maybe via the internet Archive), but I've been blogging at the newer one, jugad2.blogspot.com, since 2008, except for some gaps.

2. In Pune, once, I was looking for C. K. Prahlad's book "The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid". [1] I first went into a well-known bookstore, Manny's, and asked the salesperson there for it. He had a lackadaisical manner and almost did not bother to reply, just mumbled something. maybe saying no. Then I went out and just nearby, saw a bookstall on the footpath. I mentioned the book to the guy. Not only did he know the book title, he also knew the author's name, and mentioned a few other books by him. He then said he did not have the book right then, but could arrange to procure it in a few days. Sure enough, when I went back there a few days later, he had the book available, in the original, and I bought it. Very enterprising people, they often are, the roadside vendors and such, often more than more privileged people.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C._K._Prahalad

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fortune_at_the_Bottom_of_t...

Regarding this point from above:

>and that is what inspired me to name both my blogs "jugad", since the broad topic of both is software innovation. The older one, jugad's Journal, which was at jugad.livejournal.com, is not available now, after LiveJournal was acquired

Interestingly, I checked again just now, and that older blog of mine, jugad's Journal, now seems to be accessible:

https://jugad.livejournal.com/

Anyone interested, feel free to check it out, there are some interesting (IMO) posts about software and startups there. I ran it from 2005 to 2008, so there are quite a few posts on it, just like on my later blog, jugad2.blogspot.com, which I've been running from 2008.

Italian here. In Naples we've been having those 'smart people who steal electricity and rig water meters' for a looooooooong time. You might want to find your exceptional talents here.

Yours truly.

The pressure to succeed is immense everywhere, this is hardly a notable feature of Indian society. Others have mentioned this already on this thread but let me paraphrase, basically no one is satisfied with some objective notion of success (like a high standard of living), rather success means to do better than those around you. So if you have three cars parked in your garage in the USA and are living an impossibly comfortable life, materially, by all measures, it is nevertheless almost surely the case that you feel the "pressure to succeed".

Are you suggesting the pressure to succeed in the UK, where there exists a fairly comprehensive safety net in the form of welfare handouts, is the same as the pressure to succeed in India, where your government leaves you pretty much to fend for yourself? If that's what you're suggesting, I disagree.

Yes. People aren’t motivated by economic statistics.

Everyone wants to do well relative to their peers. Talk to suburban high school seniors and they’ll rank themselves from the Ivy League to the people who settled for Duke, down to the future townies getting a job or girls who got knocked up.

From my observation, kids with certain strong cultural affiliations have the added pressure of family. It’s tough to be an American born Chinese kid whose extended family assumes you are a lazy loaf who has it easy — they are under intense pressure to succeed.

The answer is a bit nuanced and I am suggesting that it is the case, perhaps about the same instead of being exactly the same. You can argue that the apparent cost of not studying hard in is wildly different in these two countries (basic welfare support vs complete lack thereof). Yes, I agree that when you look at providing for basic material comforts in dire circumstances it obvious which country a person ought to choose, when presented with this hypothetical choice.

But that simply fails to capture the stresses of everyday life. The average person on welfare checks can hardly be assumed to happy and is probably facing intense, if subtle, negative societal feedback for the choices he is forced to make. Do you think this person is happy to eat at McDonalds and wear cheap clothes when everyone around him is upgrading their smartphones. That's why I say that providing for basic material comforts hardly does much to improve the mental well-being. The pressure to succeed is present everywhere, and failing to do so is stressful in all such circumstances, and I would imagine that it would be roughly the same.

Again this is an article on suicides and it is the most extreme form of pressure that anyone can face. The extent to which we can compare the stress on people that aren't doing well (by societal norms) is hard to pin down exactly, and I don't want to make any bold claims there that the stresses must be exactly the same. But I do see that there is a basic similarity here.

> Are you suggesting the pressure to succeed in the UK, where there exists a fairly comprehensive safety net in the form of welfare handouts, is the same as the pressure to succeed in India

I think pressure and poverty are not as highly coupled as you suggest.

Many of the students in this article who are committing suicide come from well off families.

On the other hand the majority of Indians are not facing such high levels of pressure despite facing far higher levels of poverty.

Although I disagree as well (Indian youth has a much larger absolute, existential pressure to succeed than the UK youth has), however, mentally people tend to move to their frame of reference. People in most of the EU, if they fail in college they won’t die but many do feel immense and comparable pressure. You can tell them people in India are far worse off so count your blessings, like telling ‘Eat your sprouts, children in Africa are dying’, but that cannot really sway a young, stressed mindset. Anecdotal but a family member committed suicide because of this very pressure in an EU country with all the safety nets; he could not do as well as his friends in uni and the pressure got to him.

Sounds like they are copying the education system here in the USA.

The UK and Canada too based on my experience. In fact, I was like this up until just a few years ago in my life and have had to learn to unlearn things. May be the best schools do better but the ones I attended were about test taking. I would get good grades and then forget everything two weeks later. I also sought out well defined problem sets at work and the creativity only came out when I started working on my own projects.

I'd argue that the US, especially in tech, doesn't suffer from "credentialism" like countries like India do. You can go and become an IT professional with zero qualifications and if you're good you can move up the ranks. In other systems you need to have x degree, x certification, or be part of x union, etc.

One of the US's biggest advantages is that low regulation environments help build a meritocracy of sorts as long as obvious corruption is curtailed.

Try being a French tech startup compared to the US and tell me how bad the US's credentialism, education, and regulatory processes are. I think we have it easy and a lot of our culture rewards and encourages 'free thinking' at least for now.

>Sounds like they are copying the education system here in the USA.

>the USA.

>USA

Yes, of course. As always and forever. It is really all about the USA. And Americans. Please tell us more about where you live. As we all know, the USA is so much more interesting than the subject of the article. Which has absolutely nothing to do with the USA whatsoever. But that's boring. So, why don't you take the floor and tell us about what we're really all here to discuss. The USA.

India's education system is based off of the old UK educational system, which involves heavy standardized testing to gain entry to university. This is not knew. My grandparents grew up in british India, and my parents were born at the very end of it. They all sat through exams, and results were published publicly. It's just the way it was and still is.

If anything, America has slowly drifted towards the old British model. India though is not copying anything.