Bharat Rakshak

isubodh wrote:

vinamr_s wrote:Mr. Rahul Mehta, an old member of this forum, has proposed an interesting test-cum-reward method of improving public education in India. Here is a description of it: https://www.rahulmehta.com/edu02.htm

I think it is a very good alternative to the battery of school inspectors our current District Education Office & Education ministries have installed to ensure that teachers are teaching, schools are functioning efficiently etc.

--snip--


What do you guys think about it?

Just to give a perspective from Delhi Govt Schools where my close relative is a teacher, the teachers come to exam hall read out answers of objective and true/false questions to get students to clear exam and get higher pass percentage.

You might have to totally randomize the questions for each student to make it next to impossible to feed in answers to all students.

OMG. That's the situation in our national capital. Amazing!

In the current system, the teachers make the question papers for their school's exams (except for board exams, where their's a separate committee I guess). They know which questions are going to come beforehand and can prepare a key to read it out for the crowd.

I guess the following features of his system will make such cheating almost impossible:

1. The server randomly selects questions from the database (of lakhs of questions) and displays it on the terminals just when the exam starts.
2. All students will get the same questions BUT in a completely randomized ORDER.
3. They will only be able to go one question behind to change their response.

Additionally, we can set a limit on the time one gets to respond to a question, say 2-5 minutes (depending on difficulty).

So, at a given moment, *almost* everyone will have different questions and in those few minutes, the teachers will have to solve all questions in those 5 minutes. Say, the exam had 30-40 questions, the teachers will have to be extremely talented to be able to solve a question in 5 seconds. It'll be easier for them to teach the material to their students.

https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/hom ... 920281.cms

India can hope to see a boost in research initiatives with the allocation of Rs 50,000 crore over five years for setting up the National Research Foundation (NRF), an umbrella body for funding researches in science, technology and humanities.
Following its proposed creation in the draft of National Education Policy (NEP) 2020, the Foundation is aimed at strengthening the overall research ecosystem in the country with a focus on “identified national priority thrust areas”.

“NRF is expected to bring about a change in the operational model by bringing in the different ministries as stakeholders and connect academic institutions with them. Once the ministries pool in their problems, NRF can provide the required funding to solve their problems via the research projects,” says IIT Delhi director V Ramgopal Rao.

Delhi govt director of education tells students that they’ll get marks even if they write “anything” in a video that went viral.

Do not leave the answer sheet blank. Answer all questions. If you don’t know the answers, copy the questions in the space allotted for answers but don’t leave it blank. Write anything you remember, or can think of, but don’t leave it blank. We have spoken to your teachers and they have said that they will mark you if something is written on the answer sheets. We have also told CBSE that if the child writes anything, they should be marked,” Rai appears to be telling students in the video posted on social media.

Look at their justification:

However, a senior official from the education department of the state said that the Director’s motive was to assure the students that they should give their best in the exams without worrying about anything and it seems that specific parts of his conversation have been presented out of context.

https://swarajyamag.com/insta/delhi-gov ... objections

I see education has improved significantly in Delhi

Reminds me of the 90s UP. UP back then had one of the lowest literacy and graduation rate in the country and then Mulayam Singh took over. In true samajwadi (socialism) fashion, his government asked all the exam boards to pass students irrespective of their performance in exams, and suddenly schools and colleges in UP were reporting 100% students clearing board exams Ofcourse the travesty did not end there since many such students went on to become bureaucrats, doctors etc. As more and more Indians rose up from poverty into middleclass in the 21st century, the demand for education went up significantly. The new schools and colleges today are either owned by politicians or their cronies. We saw this in the Bihar board exams scandal in 2015 and 2016 when mass cheating was condoned by school management in exams (and the SIT found out many of the schools were owned by politicians or their close family members). And this isn't an issue limited to less affluent states, even in the wealthy southern states the quality of education has tanked, its safe to say 3/4th of the students graduating are not prepared for the modern day economy or need lots of training after college to prepare them for jobs. We have a very short window to promote manufacturing at all skill levels because our education system by and large has failed our students, and i doubt if millions and millions of graduates can be absorbed by the service sector. Else we'll continue to have Phds, MBAs and Btechs applying for grade D government jobs.

https://www.indiatoday.in/mail-today/st ... 2019-11-28

Ambar wrote:Reminds me of the 90s UP. UP back then had one of the lowest literacy and graduation rate in the country and then Mulayam Singh took over. In true samajwadi (socialism) fashion, his government asked all the exam boards to pass students irrespective of their performance in exams, and suddenly schools and colleges in UP were reporting 100% students clearing board exams Ofcourse the travesty did not end there since many such students went on to become bureaucrats, doctors etc. As more and more Indians rose up from poverty into middleclass in the 21st century, the demand for education went up significantly. The new schools and colleges today are either owned by politicians or their cronies. We saw this in the Bihar board exams scandal in 2015 and 2016 when mass cheating was condoned by school management in exams (and the SIT found out many of the schools were owned by politicians or their close family members). And this isn't an issue limited to less affluent states, even in the wealthy southern states the quality of education has tanked, its safe to say 3/4th of the students graduating are not prepared for the modern day economy or need lots of training after college to prepare them for jobs. We have a very short window to promote manufacturing at all skill levels because our education system by and large has failed our students, and i doubt if millions and millions of graduates can be absorbed by the service sector. Else we'll continue to have Phds, MBAs and Btechs applying for grade D government jobs.

https://www.indiatoday.in/mail-today/st ... 2019-11-28

Total Samajwadi fashion, indeed.

I agree with your thoughts on where should our interests lie.

IMO first, we need to make education decent enough, then we can have a real manufacturing & engineering design industry base and finally, the industrial requirements can only make the research in our universities and quality of college graduates world class.

In Hindi

Over 45% of engineering seats go vacant in MH in 2021.

https://www.hindustantimes.com/cities/m ... 93624.html

The situation is similar in many states with large number of technical colleges. Something like 70% of first year BE seats were vacant in TN last year 6 months after the entrance tests. AICTE has already put a ban on new colleges coming up until 2023, in my opinion it is too little too late. During the early 2000s boom for technical education, districts which for decades had one govt. aided engineering institute suddenly had 4 or 5 unaided colleges , many of them deemed. Many of these new engineering colleges lack basic infrastructure, sometimes sharing lab facilities with another institute. Poor quality of staff, ever lowering standard of student intake and absence of infrastructure has resulted in more and more fresh grads either struggle to find employment as per their education level or find any employment at all.

Both MH and KAR have asked AICTE to reduce the number of seats by 30% this year but even then many students seem to be opting towards 3 yr bachelors degrees in pure sciences or business administration than take BE. 3 million students graduate each year with some technical degree , in the age of automation it is impossible to create that many jobs to keep them employed in the sector, so we are seeing increasing underemployment.

When we look at the above numbers it becomes clear why the number of Indian students enrolling in western universities is increasing every year both at undergrad and grad levels. The unemployment and underemployment in STEM is a burgeoning issue which needs to be tackled sooner than later.

deejay wrote:

Rahul Mehta wrote: The trivial solution is to have bilingual textbooks --- the left page in hindi or local language and right page will have EXACT same translation in English. (Aside --- I have been campaigning for bilingual textbooks for over 14 years now) !! And one can also have trilingual textbooks. Page no 3k+1 will have text in Hindi, and page 3k+2 will have same page in English and page 3k+3 will have same page in local language. The questions should be in 2-3 languages too. Some 35% questions will be MCQ and so language wont matter. Rest is OSF

Not really that trivial-
>The text will become double the thickness and maybe 03 times the cost
>The cost will increase because of more paper and translation work.
>Translations and quality control is a night mare
>Teachers use the Textbooks, children merely follow them. Now, if Teacher does not use the 2nd language, children won't. Our classrooms are mechanical assembly lines almost (most schools, don't talk about those big, good schools in metros)
> A fatter book will tear faster. Unless you hard bind them and drive up the prices further
>Who will lift the weight of these fatter books on their shoulders to humour your multilingual solutions - Little Children.

It’s not necessary that the textbook becomes thicker, you can divide one textbook into 2 separate ones. This is already done for class-11, 12 CBSE Physics, Chemistry, Math. So, last two points are void.

Yes, cost will increase. But that’s the cost it takes to make it easier for children to pick up English & be better at it. Some research has been done on it. E.g. I can quote studies like this: https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1 ... 12037/meta

However, it will be more useful to read some literature reviews on this (which I haven’t, till now). If I find some, I’ll share them here.

Besides, this is being tried in 1000 govt schools in Karnataka:

https://www.thehindu.com/news/cities/ba ... 547441.ece

https://www.newindianexpress.com/states ... 74506.html

In the textbooks they are using, one sentence is in English and one in Kannada. I’m not sure about how it will work differently than what you guys were discussing earlier in this thread.

Last month, I finished an introductory course for Quantum Computing by The Coding School (sponsored IBM), meant for American K-12 and kids from all over the world. The only saving grace is that most of the students were from India (my perception).

(Rant On)Where are we really heading towards as a nation?(/Rant Off). Sorry BRAdmins, had to vent somewhere!

Is education a State level subject as well like law and health?

Maria wrote:Is education a State level subject as well like law and health?

Education is in the concurrent list. So, both States and Center can make laws on it.

I think GoI is going extreme on some issues even when no one is pushing for it..Don't think this is best interest of nation..


Strangely I see a similar news here in USA like the University of California said today that it would no longer be consider using any tests as part of its undergraduate admissions process...

Dec 17, 2021
Centre approves to set up 100 Sainik Schools in partnership with NGOs, Private Schools & state govts
https://newsonair.gov.in/News?title=Cen ... &id=431747

Noob Q ...
I am wondering why does not the govt education dept partner with US universities so that their online courses (non-credit and STEM only) can be done here in India by Indian students in schools/Unis/offices etc. to get our manpower improved ... OK big statement but for IT we already have Udemy etc. offering paid/discounted courses , freeware from MIT/Stanford etc. on Youtube, Coursera, iTunes U etc. At an individual level students from middle classes already might do this to line up their US-bound CV but there is just so much good free content available even if a bit dated that is accessed by kids around the world (who will compete with us). We can pay some royalties, may be establish VPN , pay for internet etc. ( I know why pay Unkil and everything is in English... )
I have seen some of Chinese/Taiwanese and SEAsians translate these courses/exercises into Chinese/Indo/Malay/Thai, post solved problems on blogs and even load videos with translations (I would not expect any less from Chicoms)... they are scaling up quickly in AI and IT products as a result without needing English...
My point is that such collabs help IITs but we all know there are brains across many non-IITs as well and we can catch them young(er) ...

A very innovative depiction of the fraudulent AIT snake oil

Responding to a post from the 'Indian economy' thread as this relates to our education system :

yensoy wrote:If we need 2 doctors/1000 people, and we 2.6M doctors; and if we assume an average doctor works for 30 years, we need 86k doctors per year on an average. Since we are woefully short of 2/1000, we have a shortfall to make up. A lot of doctors relocate or work overseas; some don't graduate and some stop working early. So even at 92k seats/year we are still churning out fewer doctors than we need. I am surprised someone couldn't do the math pre-2014 and see how woefully short we were in the medical education field.

While that is true just adding more medical and BDS seats is not the solution. As the IT industry took off in the mid-90s engineering colleges started coming up by the hundreds all over the country . As the number of colleges increased the quality of education declined so much so that by mid-2000s many of the newer engineering colleges were nothing more than paki 'Axact' type degree minting mills. Fast forward another 10 yrs you now have many engineering colleges either cutting admissions or outright shutting down. Many BE and Mtech grads from these newer colleges are either unemployed or underemployed or so unqualified that their prospects of ever finding a decent job is next to none (one only has to visit garment or plastic factories in south India to see how many BE graduates work in such places).

Already the preposterous reservation system in medical field has ensured that its not the best and the brightest who become doctors but the ones with the right caste certificate or those with large money bags. Colleges, especially medical colleges are the preferred investments for MLAs, MPs, Islamic foundations and even some wealthy hindu gurus and their institutes. With this in mind we have to be careful that an already declining quality of MDs does not deteriorate further similar to what happened with the BE graduates. I wish some political party someday soon will have the audacity to demand an end to all reservations atleast in medical institutes.

There is a big difference between Medical colleges and others (Engineering etc). All medical colleges have to be attached to hospitals and there is a clear hospital bed : medical seat ratio to ensure every medical student gets sufficient exposure to the real world. This is one reason that private medical colleges are few and far in between compared with engineering where the setup cost is minimal; also why there is a relatively high quality of education compared with the dilution you have alluded to in other fields. Also, the health care provider (state government usually) has other priorities than setting up colleges.

Harsh Madhusudan
@harshmadhusudan

I think the single most important indicator to track in India is how many finish high school especially girls.

Literacy is now near universal in this age group, and at college level there is tech disruption plus vocational debate present.

But having all finishing school needed.

https://twitter.com/harshmadhusudan/sta ... 1588312066

^ vijayk garu, the above list is not complete. What are the figures for AP? My guess is that it would be in the Odisha, Gujarat group unlike TS.

Hindustan Times:
Telangana cabinet decides to make English medium compulsory in all govt schools

At the EOD, they will neither know Telugu nor English well enough to read and understand technical instructions for manufacturing/technician jobs.

S_Madhukar wrote:Noob Q ...
I am wondering why does not the govt education dept partner with US universities so that their online courses (non-credit and STEM only) can be done here in India by Indian students in schools/Unis/offices etc. to get our manpower improved ... OK big statement but for IT we already have Udemy etc. offering paid/discounted courses , freeware from MIT/Stanford etc. on Youtube, Coursera, iTunes U etc. At an individual level students from middle classes already might do this to line up their US-bound CV but there is just so much good free content available even if a bit dated that is accessed by kids around the world (who will compete with us). We can pay some royalties, may be establish VPN , pay for internet etc. ( I know why pay Unkil and everything is in English... )
I have seen some of Chinese/Taiwanese and SEAsians translate these courses/exercises into Chinese/Indo/Malay/Thai, post solved problems on blogs and even load videos with translations (I would not expect any less from Chicoms)... they are scaling up quickly in AI and IT products as a result without needing English...
My point is that such collabs help IITs but we all know there are brains across many non-IITs as well and we can catch them young(er) ...

Actually all this (and IMHO much more) is already being done by many institutes in India - Including many IITs for quite some time (about a decade - and becoming more and more popular).. very similar (and on par with MIT's open OCW). I Know many in USA who have used these courses and have very favorable view (of course, depends on prof who has taught it). Check out these institutes sites.

With Covid - many IIT's have many of these resources available for wider audience - So other colleges can use the material (and perhaps run Q&A sessions and labds etc locally). I posted link to one such course by famous Physics prof Verma (who just got Padam Sri) some time ago in Physics dhaga -- because the course was for aam junta as well as high-school students during Covid. (Just do google - many of these are on you-tube too)...

(There are plenty of good material for technical subjects - like Quantum Mechanics or EE - But more is being done for more basic level and in local languages -- Many of us are very interested in widening the scope and more material in local languages and high school - math and science - material along with other established online services like Khan Academy etc - there is a big push (and GoI encouragement) to find good professor who are willing to contribute)..

xpost: viewtopic.php?p=2531125#p2531125

I attended (virtually) IIT Kanpur's Convocation where Chief guest was PM Modi - (Also present were CM Yogi Adityanath, and ex ISRO chief). One part surprised me most was the "degrees/certificates" were not paper copies but digital certificates (delivered by PM with push of a button to thousands of graduating students). Even in other advance countries very few universities do that now.

Watch:




(IT Kanpur students received digital degrees based on an in-house blockchain-driven technology that has been developed by the IIT-K under the National Blockchain Project in India. Hence, these digital degrees are highly-secured, verifiable globally, and are unforgeable, according to recent reports)

Interesting the main leader who is driving all this leading technology is Prof Agrawal - SUTRA fame!

Amber, I am surprised at your surprise.

GoI has been talking about DigiLocker as part of MEITY and the beta was rolled out in 2015. Since 2016 my uncle-who-never-went-to-IIT was asking his nephew and nieces to use it.

My uncle-who-never-went-to-IIT also wants to link DigiLocker with demat shares. Also wants to link financial accounts and properties to digilocker with appropriate rights of survivorship. When I suggested that (in 2016) about the schools and colleges issuing the degree certs on the digilocker, he was surprised that why such basic thing was not done and suggested that IITs can easily do the job and if they are not up to it, then NITs can be called. Remember he is the uncle-who-never-went-to-IIT. Savvy Huh?

Using digital certificates to create an authentication chain is not a new concept. The extension of blockchain into digital certificates was definitely the next stage since authentication and audit-ability are both satisfied. And UGC has already requested all universities to start issuing degree certs on digilocker and accept them too. This is part of the National Academic Depository goal. Check out their excellent website https://nad.digilocker.gov.in/

Glad that the facilities IIT-K came to some use. The interest of the money spent on IIT by itself would have launched a couple of James Webb telescope.

Vayutuvan wrote:^ vijayk garu, the above list is not complete. What are the figures for AP? My guess is that it would be in the Odisha, Gujarat group unlike TS.

AP was not covered in the Hindu article which published.

I found their source. Have to dig thru it. Will do when I find time

http://udise.in/Downloads/Publications/ ... sional.pdf

disha wrote:Amber, I am surprised at your surprise.

GoI has been talking about DigiLocker as part of MEITY and the beta was rolled out in 2015. Since 2016 my uncle-who-never-went-to-IIT was asking his nephew and nieces to use it.

My uncle-who-never-went-to-IIT also wants to link DigiLocker with demat shares. Also wants to link financial accounts and properties to digilocker with appropriate rights of survivorship. When I suggested that (in 2016) about the schools and colleges issuing the degree certs on the digilocker, he was surprised that why such basic thing was not done and suggested that IITs can easily do the job and if they are not up to it, then NITs can be called. Remember he is the uncle-who-never-went-to-IIT. Savvy Huh?

Using digital certificates to create an authentication chain is not a new concept. The extension of blockchain into digital certificates was definitely the next stage since authentication and audit-ability are both satisfied. And UGC has already requested all universities to start issuing degree certs on digilocker and accept them too. This is part of the National Academic Depository goal. Check out their excellent website https://nad.digilocker.gov.in/

Glad that the facilities IIT-K came to some use. The interest of the money spent on IIT by itself would have launched a couple of James Webb telescope.

I try to ignore trolling posts but the above is just -- WOW!!!! Speechless!

Amber, I am surprised at your surprise

I am not surprised to see you are "not surprised"..
***

Okay - just so that someone may take your comments a little seriously, I am pointing out the obvious -

This is a BIG deal

This is why PM Modi (and all others who are not ignorant of technology) called it a big deal.


I do not know any other institute in the world which has started doing it ... (and NO it is not the kind of silliness you have wrote about digilockers etc --

Hint: Just look up the recent news papers about how much importance GoI is giving it.
(I am giving just one link but it is all over the news, if one wants to get more details:

Key part here: These digital degrees can be verified globally and are unforgeable, according to IIT Kanpur

(Link:PM Modi launches blockchain-based digital degrees at IIT Kanpur. All you need to know about the technology

On this Jan 26, the same technology was also used in distributing other republic day honors.

Recently Blockchain assumes limelight as PM takes to new tech to award Bal Puraskar certificates

Over and out -- hope there is some audience here which respects knowledge and education here.. /sigh/

Amber G. wrote: Actually all this (and IMHO much more) is already being done by many institutes in India - Including many IITs for quite some time (about a decade - and becoming more and more popular).. very similar (and on par with MIT's open OCW). I Know many in USA who have used these courses and have very favorable view (of course, depends on prof who has taught it). Check out these institutes sites.

Amber G madam, a lot of has been done and made available via NPTEL - the content was initially made available via youtube since 2007!! You know the tragic part: A majority of the kids I deal with during campus interview are unaware of this. Personally, I always go to NPTEL when I want to learn some of the fundamentals. This is far more rigorous than most commercial courses and way more cheaper. Unfortunately, we still don't value our own assets as much. A lot of kids you speak to today would know about udemy, coursera et al but will be blissfully unaware of NPTEL

This tweet calls out one of the dimensions of the "unemployment problem" nicely: Indian In Pixels Tweet

We need more folks taking technical courses; I would argue we need more focus on ITI and different trades that allow people to acquire hard skills rather than simply graduate engineers who just know theory, albeit they are still more employable than those trained *just* in humanities.

^^^ Thanks.

Thanks so much for the NPTEL info!

saumitra_j wrote:This tweet calls out one of the dimensions of the "unemployment problem" nicely: Indian In Pixels Tweet

We need more folks taking technical courses; I would argue we need more focus on ITI and different trades that allow people to acquire hard skills rather than simply graduate engineers who just know theory, albeit they are still more employable than those trained *just* in humanities.

How do you "train" in Humanities?
India should just ban BA degree and rather invest in technical diplomas.

^^^Cross posting from other thread

vimal wrote: How do you "train" in Humanities?
India should just ban BA degree and rather invest in technical diplomas.

Well, what ever you call it. The problem is that this lot wants to become Babus and then rent seeking starts. And a whole lot of them can't become Babus and then add to the unproductive, unemployed folks. I completely agree with you: We need more ITIs in trades like carpentry, fitting, welding, machining et al rather than BA in English/Hindi/Whatever.

saumitra_j wrote:We need more folks taking technical courses; I would argue we need more focus on ITI and different trades that allow people to acquire hard skills rather than simply graduate engineers who just know theory, albeit they are still more employable than those trained *just* in humanities.

vimal wrote:India should just ban BA degree and rather invest in technical diplomas.

saumitra_j wrote:The problem is that this lot wants to become Babus and then rent seeking starts. And a whole lot of them can't become Babus and then add to the unproductive, unemployed folks.

I was once a "Babu" material , and to be frank it was a skill which I learnt as a hobby which finally helped me reach where I am now. I learnt computers during school and college days as a hobby, and the IT boom helped me get a break into the IT industry which was then taking baby steps in India. I am a BA pass chap but yet a small Japanese company decided to take me into their rolls after checking my programming skills (and I am eternally thankful to them). If the IT Boom had not started I would perhaps be a "Babu", or even now aspiring to be one .

Even today for many jobs a graduation is a must; and the easiest one to get was the B.A humanities degrees. This enabled some one to start appearing for the umpteen PSC tests. In my days the smarter of the B.A folks generally took up LLB after that and enrolled as advocates. More enterprising of that lot also moved into politics. B.A courses & Arts colleges; these were from where maximum people got into politics. Folks with better command over English etc generally appeared for the SSB type exams and join the Army. For others there were state level PSC exams right from the police all the way to various state government departments.

The problem with the B.A courses is that it is a very generalist course. The stuff which gets taught are often 1950s vintage; which the whole scheme perhaps designed by the British. The knowledge which they gain is practically of no value (understanding diphthongs or remembering the name of the third wife of Henry the 8th - what does that get), and there is also no 'hands on' trade which gets taught alongside. Perhaps the system should be changed that there has to be a technical trade which gets taught in every graduation course. Could be basic electronics, plumbing, carpentry etc. etc. The current B.A courses can be subsidiary courses (perhaps to improve communication skills, civic sense, understand history of the country etc.).

All said and done I have also observed that the skills of the so called technical graduates have also come down. When the IT boom really peaked a lot of engineering establishments were started (mainly in South India) and because of larger pool of seats any one with some decent marks in Plus 2 could try to become an 'injineer'. Many of these folks stumbled down the way due to the large number of 'supplementary exams' they had to clear. A few folks I know have also now taken jobs which earlier was to be done by Diploma/ITI qualified people. In states like KL, B.Tech & MCA folks have even joined the police as constables (where 10th std pass is still the entry criteria).

Not just India, even in other countries like USA, degrees like English literature is laughed upon as useless. Eventually these folks tend end up learning some computer skills (STEM skills fwiw) like office or powerpoint and get employed as clerks. In USA a lot of these folks also join a bootcamp (NIIT anyone) and then join a startup to get a toehold in the tech industry. Many of them also rant against the H1Bs stealing their jobs.

vimal wrote:Not just India, even in other countries like USA, degrees like English literature is laughed upon as useless. Eventually these folks tend end up learning some computer skills (STEM skills fwiw) like office or powerpoint and get employed as clerks. In USA a lot of these folks also join a bootcamp (NIIT anyone) and then join a startup to get a toehold in the tech industry. Many of them also rant against the H1Bs stealing their jobs.

You might be surprised that degrees with english literature or liberal arts variety or whatever still have value in the US. In medium sized and large organizations, employers are looking for workers who have people skills, not necessarily technical skills to manage employees and minimize conflicts and achieve teamwork and better efficiency in worker interactions. Technical skills can be acquired easily however people skills are not easily acquirable.

Liberal arts degree programs encourage important skills, such as creativity, research, analytical reasoning, innovative problem-solving, and communicative skills. Based on my experience in working with several fortune 500 companies and smaller companies, most employers value oral communication, critical thinking, ethical judgment, working effectively in teams, written communication, and the real-world application of skills and knowledge. Technical skill is a must too but they view those kind of skills as easily acquirable during the course of employment. The other skills mentioned are not that easily acquirable and hard to replace. For instance, I was involved in a university affiliated computer project that relied on grants from several companies to keep going. There was a graduate student from India who had excellent technical skill sets but did not have good communication skills orally or written. Over the year, the professors and even other graduate students (including me) tried to help him out by teaching the communication skills set but in the end it wasn't enough. Even the company realized that he was smart but he couldnt do the required job of documenting and illustrating on paper so the knowledge could be passed on and he was let go. He didn't understand how important communication skills were in a team setting where IP knowledge must be easily translated to other team members in a way that they can hit the ground running in short order. In my experience, I found that people who have excellent communication skills and creativity and have sufficient analytical reasoning and okay technical knowledge tend to be promoted to managers and upper level management all the way to the very top. Some of them had liberal arts degrees.

For a very good example of this, take no further look than Steve Jobs. Yes he dropped out of college but he went to a liberal arts college, Reeds College and he started APPLE with his buddy Wozniak who was a technogeek genius. However due to his own introvert personality and lack of communication skills, Wozniak was not the face of APPLE but Jobs was and he was not even a technogeek genius. He just mastered in communication skills and creativity.

Arts degrees have their value, but I've seen enough litt/arts/humanities graduates & PGs with poor communication skills (to my surprise) that I don't expect to find such skills as a given in that group. The converse is also true, I have seen non litt/arts/humanities people with excellent, even exceptional comm skills.

Poor communication skills not just in English, but Indian languages, even in mother tongues is everywhere. One only has to turn on desi TV channels to see how poorly sentences are formed and incoherently ideas are expressed by many, even most people.

Why by and large the average comm skills continue to be poor still puzzles me :
- is it cultural - are we more tolerant of loose/approximate expression and imprecision than others?
- Is it social - Its a fact that higher classes across religions communicate better on the average
- Is it economic - well off classes again on an average communicate better than poorer classes
- Is it geographic - urban vs rural / north vs south / NEast vs rest...
- Is it the rote based education that most people get from teachers who themselves have poor skills?
- Is it civilisational ? Living in mostly self contained and somewhat autonomous and endogamous jatis, communities, villages, regions has led to reduced need for a common individual to have good comm skills ? Whereas exploring, conquering, seafaring peoples need to communicate precisely to be understood by fellow men and strangers therefore evolve specific terminology and vocabulary and learn and teach it rigorously? As an example, look at the words and expressions in boating/sea faring. Very detailed, very consistent across centuries.

I don't think litt/arts/humanities are useless for the society, nor that they don't matter. On the contrary, they are opinion makers, entertainers etc. greatly influence popular culture, and teach language and expression to your children and shape the thinking of the very young at school.

A very interesting take on the real value of an Arts degree comes from a very unusual personality: Jocko Willink, highly decorated ex Navy Seal who pursued a BA in English at the University of San Diego.

Hgupta I wanted to stress that the quantity of BA grads far outstrips the demand for them every where. Maybe a top percentile gets a chance but most of them are pretty unemployable.

vimal wrote:Hgupta I wanted to stress that the quantity of BA grads far outstrips the demand for them every where. Maybe a top percentile gets a chance but most of them are pretty unemployable.

My experience is based on life in the UK. One of my schoolmates (from my days in Kenya) had a son who was pressured by his parents to study Medicine. He dropped out of college after the first year and was bumming around for a couple of years. His father was reluctant to push him into any profession and told me that his son was going to read a BA in History at UCL (University College London) , my alma mater. His final intention was to read Law but many BAs are given exemption from the first two years of a Law degree and have to do just one year of Law and a LAw practce course (one year) that all including LLBs have to take.

This boy is now working for a Law firm in the City of London.

Many BAs become teachers, or go into "Management" of large corporations.

By the way , I met Steve Jobs once (he was a couple of years older than me) and you are right that he was the visionary with Wozniak being the technical wizard. I am an electonics engineer but Woz was miles ahead technically.

Sachin wrote: In my days the smarter of the B.A folks generally took up LLB after that and enrolled as advocates. More enterprising of that lot moved into politics.

The bolded part is Agree with you in general.

Actually, arts and humanities are really important and science/engg students should get some exposure to it. And I mean this outside the context of a B.A./MA/M.Phil context of formal education in India. I have no idea what get's taught in a desi B.A. course (and janata...please don't try to edumacate me on this ). One entire forum at BRF (Strategic and Political) and half of the other 2 fora (Mil. stuff and Economic) all arts/humanities type of stuff. A lot of professions do not require a technical degree e.g. lawyers, managers of non-technical (and sometimes technical) groups and organizations, management of government functions, PR, marketing, economics (yes, it requires some math).

One could argue that even science got its start from humanities e.g. if you consider a definition of science as an enquiry into the nature of Nature, the first modes of enquiry and questioning came from philosophy when they tried to contemplate what is reality and existence. This holds true from Hindu philosophy POV as well. Of course, Swami Vivekananda famously argued that ancient Hindus directed their substantial power of enquiry inwards (and came up with 'Tat tvam asi') and the Greeks directed their enquiry outwards and came up with theories of composition of matter (atoms etc) which forms the foundation of science as we know it. But the basis for both is a system of logic and persistent enquiry. The study of external nature is what is considered science today and the basis for the enquiry started from philosophy. Some of older journals on technical/scientific matters show an indication of this. For example, journal 'Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society ....', started not even 400 years ago has scientific papers in them.

Aldonkar:
Is your friend's son following the footsteps of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi? Gandhi too got his law degree from Univ. College, London.

Cyrano wrote:
Why by and large the average comm skills continue to be poor still puzzles me :
- is it cultural - are we more tolerant of loose/approximate expression and imprecision than others?
- Is it social - Its a fact that higher classes across religions communicate better on the average
- Is it economic - well off classes again on an average communicate better than poorer classes
- Is it geographic - urban vs rural / north vs south / NEast vs rest...
- Is it the rote based education that most people get from teachers who themselves have poor skills?
- Is it civilisational ? Living in mostly self contained and somewhat autonomous and endogamous jatis, communities, villages, regions has led to reduced need for a common individual to have good comm skills ? Whereas exploring, conquering, seafaring peoples need to communicate precisely to be understood by fellow men and strangers therefore evolve specific terminology and vocabulary and learn and teach it rigorously? As an example, look at the words and expressions in boating/sea faring. Very detailed, very consistent across centuries.

Seafaring is an inherently dangerous endeavour, especially upto about 200-300 years ago when mechanization and accurate timepieces for navigation were not available. Also, it is/has always been, a technical field. When you are in a (any) profession where your life depends on carrying out specific tasks at specific times, I think precision in communication will follow automatically. I would expect to see this in other cases like military, policing, etc. When there are no consequences to imprecise communication, then anything goes/sab chalta hai.