<story><title>The most prized degree in India became the most worthless</title><url>https://restofworld.org/2020/india-engineering-degree/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>andrewflnr</author><text>&amp;gt; ...and the caste system dictates admissions policies anyway&lt;p&gt;Like, officially, in writing? Even if it&amp;#x27;s informal, as an American it blows my mind that that&amp;#x27;s still a thing.</text></item><item><author>onetimeusename</author><text>Something similar happened in the US where numbers of students in CS went up over time. However, academic fraud has not been as big of a problem as it is in India.&lt;p&gt;An Indian friend of mine said that IIT is good but hardly anyone can get in and the caste system dictates admissions policies anyway so many people try to get engineering degrees from schools with lax standards. The professors are completely unqualified, according to her, and people have to pay more to learn the material from off-campus tutors but not everyone can afford that.&lt;p&gt;I think this should be the focus is ending academic fraud rather than some of these other issues. That could do a lot of good. Here is a reference to a story I found that corroborates what I was told.[1]&lt;p&gt;[1]:&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;timesofindia.indiatimes.com&amp;#x2F;city&amp;#x2F;chennai&amp;#x2F;UGC-probe-finds-50-faculty-unqualified&amp;#x2F;articleshow&amp;#x2F;48766010.cms&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;timesofindia.indiatimes.com&amp;#x2F;city&amp;#x2F;chennai&amp;#x2F;UGC-probe-f...&lt;/a&gt;</text></item><item><author>umvi</author><text>&amp;quot;When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;Churning out engineers as fast as possible and pressuring everyone to become one despite lack of interest just guarantees you will churn out astronomical numbers of crappy engineers.&lt;p&gt;And I hate to say it... but it possibly creates unintentional racial bias in interviewers because the sheer volume of crappy engineers being churned out from [Indian&amp;#x2F;Chinese&amp;#x2F;etc. universities] has preconditioned you to think &lt;i&gt;all engineers&lt;/i&gt; from [Indian&amp;#x2F;Chinese&amp;#x2F;etc. universities] are crappy, which couldn&amp;#x27;t be further from the truth.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>smdz</author><text>It is not the caste based discrimination like you might intuitively perceive.&lt;p&gt;In history there was a caste system that led to systemic deprivation of education and opportunity to underprivileged castes. So India (few decades back) came up with a reservation system so that people belonging to those castes could get jobs&amp;#x2F;education&amp;#x2F;opportunities.&lt;p&gt;In today&amp;#x27;s times it&amp;#x27;s scale is more like racism that you would find in most developed nations.&lt;p&gt;However after achieving the basic purpose, the reservation system based on caste was never withdrawn. Lots of political parties invested into those vote banks.&lt;p&gt;Nowadays, the situation is such that many people who get admissions based on the reservation policy are from acceptably well off educated families. There are many people who are relatively poor and financially underprivileged but belong to the upper caste and they cannot get any benefits.</text></comment>
<story><title>The most prized degree in India became the most worthless</title><url>https://restofworld.org/2020/india-engineering-degree/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>andrewflnr</author><text>&amp;gt; ...and the caste system dictates admissions policies anyway&lt;p&gt;Like, officially, in writing? Even if it&amp;#x27;s informal, as an American it blows my mind that that&amp;#x27;s still a thing.</text></item><item><author>onetimeusename</author><text>Something similar happened in the US where numbers of students in CS went up over time. However, academic fraud has not been as big of a problem as it is in India.&lt;p&gt;An Indian friend of mine said that IIT is good but hardly anyone can get in and the caste system dictates admissions policies anyway so many people try to get engineering degrees from schools with lax standards. The professors are completely unqualified, according to her, and people have to pay more to learn the material from off-campus tutors but not everyone can afford that.&lt;p&gt;I think this should be the focus is ending academic fraud rather than some of these other issues. That could do a lot of good. Here is a reference to a story I found that corroborates what I was told.[1]&lt;p&gt;[1]:&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;timesofindia.indiatimes.com&amp;#x2F;city&amp;#x2F;chennai&amp;#x2F;UGC-probe-finds-50-faculty-unqualified&amp;#x2F;articleshow&amp;#x2F;48766010.cms&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;timesofindia.indiatimes.com&amp;#x2F;city&amp;#x2F;chennai&amp;#x2F;UGC-probe-f...&lt;/a&gt;</text></item><item><author>umvi</author><text>&amp;quot;When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;Churning out engineers as fast as possible and pressuring everyone to become one despite lack of interest just guarantees you will churn out astronomical numbers of crappy engineers.&lt;p&gt;And I hate to say it... but it possibly creates unintentional racial bias in interviewers because the sheer volume of crappy engineers being churned out from [Indian&amp;#x2F;Chinese&amp;#x2F;etc. universities] has preconditioned you to think &lt;i&gt;all engineers&lt;/i&gt; from [Indian&amp;#x2F;Chinese&amp;#x2F;etc. universities] are crappy, which couldn&amp;#x27;t be further from the truth.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>andi999</author><text>I was told (if I remember correctly) that discriminated castes get an advantage (or even a certain percentage of seats) at universities in India.
I am surprised this could be considered mind blowing, isnt there also affirmative action for college admission in America?</text></comment>