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Comment by pm90 | Hacker News Reader

Unpopular opinion: this is not the way engineering should be taught, to ace a stupid test. I understand these are economically underprivileged kids and I wish them best, but I would really love it if someone followed up on where they end up after graduation.

I’m hoping that as the economy develops further, the need to go to such extremes will diminish and folks can pursue their true calling.

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Taxpayer money shouldn't be spent in funding such competition.

While education systems in west are focused towards collaboration, Indian education system makes them compete against each other like wild dogs.

When will India understand, it's not about competition but collaboration.

We can argue this system creates very few winners and a lot of people feel like losers in this system.

If they made them feel better, they can increase their net education output which would be far better than showcasing any specific rank or endorsing any specific brand like IIT.

>While education systems in west are focused towards collaboration

Citation needed. Capitalism is basically "free for all competition" in a nutshell.

that's a cynical view. Capitalism is the freedom to buy and sell from whoever you choose. If what you choose to sell is something so unique, you'll escape competition.

Oh no, if you want the cynical view of capitalism it's that the already rich create a rigged system in which they are able to exert disproportionate influence on the government and regulators that affect their ability to create and preserve their own wealth. They then use this influence to push weaker competitors out of the marketplace, eventually creating a single monopoly on an industry. Allowed to go to its conclusion, you replace political empires with financial rule.

That's just the short version. "free for all" is actually the optimistic view in my opinion. At least in a "free for all" metaphor you have the assumption of equal standing and "the strongest" winning.

> While education systems in west are focused towards collaboration, Indian education system makes them compete against each other like wild dogs.

P.S.: the "competition" is just for entrance to these premier Indian colleges. I guess, the same would hold true if you want to enter prestigious U.S. colleges like Stanford, Harvard, Yale, or any other Ivy League colleges. Of course, in India, the number of students applying is vastly different, which is what makes it super competitive.

In my opinion that's what also happens with entry to top class institutions like Stanford, MIT, Caltech etc.

Competition for better schooling is everywhere weather it is for the Grammar Schools of the UK or Gymnasium School of Germany. I have seen parents preparing their kids for Grammar School right after they leave Kindergarden age.

> someone followed up on where they end up after graduation

There you go: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hSwi3RcVBzw

It is mostly big banks, big and medium IT companies.

The amazing engineering work at ISRO is mostly engineers from regional non-IITian colleges.

https://swarajyamag.com/culture/reviewing-the-real-super-30-... seems to have some comments from past students

Agreed, that test eats up years of childhood.

Considering that nearly 100K students give the exam, what criteria will work best to select 5K students for available seats?

Nearly 1 million, students try to crack IIT exam.

No.of seats available are 12-13k. That's nearly 1.3%.

No criteria. I think the problem is with the low number of seats available. A similar quality of education can be made available at a much larger scale if the country is so motivated. It's understandable that not all branches of engineering at other universities can acquire the kind of funding that IITs have. Apart from some specialized lab equipment, there is no technical reason all universities can't offer a comparable quality of education all over India. There are only bureaucratic reasons.

I for one hope that education moves online completely. In india, the education sector cannot meet the demand and as a result it's filled with meaningless tests.

> this is not the way engineering should be taught

Nit: "super 30" is not about teaching engineering. That begins after the said exam.

Anecdotal, but many of them end up in the Bay Area (my dad is one of them).

Recently, Indian government have released new educational draft.

If everything goes as planned, it will be implemented by 2030.

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