My friend’s son, who is studying at the Harvard University, computer science, for a PhD was in Mysore. He works with two advisers, both graciously agreed to give him the autonomy to work from “home” — Mysore.
During his five-month stay, he wanted to do some “good”, especially to the students of his alma mater — the National Institute of Engineering. He volunteered to teach a course, “From NAND to TETRIS in 12 Steps”, which in simple term means the elements of computing systems.
Initially, the course was appreciated for its novelty and was considered relevant by the faculty and the students. Prashanth was overwhelmed with the response as 265 students enrolled. But soon this number reduced to 200 to 140 to 100 to 70 to 37 to 17. Finally, only two students were interested in completing the course.
What use is a course which does not get a student an IT job? The question on the lips of every student was — will you give us a certificate, will this increase our prospects of getting an IT job? This, of course, is the ultimate dream and luxury of the present day right-thinking, educated individual.
The other important reason for the students’ indifference was that the course was not recognised by the Visvesvaraya Technological University. The knowledge-building aspect of learning is obviously absent in a system, which emphasis on churning students for the IT industry and affiliated jobs.
Students get into these institutions either by management quota or the CET. This year, the management quota gets 45 per cent of the seats and requires an up front payment of Rs 8 lakh or more. A fee of Rs 1.25 lakh every year for four years is to be added, making “this” education equivalent to, if not higher than, what is offered in some of the states like Texas in the US. But the quality of education does not anywhere come close to US standards.
For the rest of 55 per cent CET seats, the quota system is applicable, there are so many categories included, over time, that what is left is 9 out of every 100 as “merit” seats. We have reached a stage where there would be a quota for merit.But who is interested in merit or quality of education? Not the politicians. Creating an enabling environment for the students is obviously of low priority. The bureaucracy — in this case an interested one — gets little time in changing curriculum, teaching techniques — as the attention is diverted. The law governing universities in Karnataka keeps the control with bureaucrats/government and not with academic bodies in the university. Even then the university bodies are filled with nominees of politicians.
Given this scenario, is it possible to talk about quality or can we think of competing in the global market? Many of the students with potential get excluded in such a system. We continue to gloat about students like Prashanth, who are with the best of universities in the world, while we should actually be feeling bad that our system isn’t producing more students like him.
(I thank MALATHI BHAT for forwarding an thought provoking article by Shashikala Sitaram, which was published in DECCAN HERALD.Thank you ma'm!)
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