Hello folks… thought of pouring out my opinion on the present day educational system in engineering colleges, atleast in Tamil Nadu. To be frank, it is really a cause for concern… The syllabus that we have, the method of teaching adopted(well, the lecturers and proffessors are fantastic…. it is the system that is faulty), and the way exams are being conducted– everything should be changed…. To put it straight, the semester exams test our memorising power rather than our knowledge 🙁 . Luckily I got into an autonomous college and so am enjoying a much better system.
I would suggest that Anna Univ ahould revamp the whole syllabus and system. The syallabus must be more realted to what is being used in the industry in real time presently than being related what was in use a few years back…. I also recommend that all subjects should be practical in nature rather than concentrating only on the theoritical part….For instance, I studied OS and networks without knowing how semaphores are implemented practically in OSes and without knowing how TCP and IP are implemented…. 🙁
So, it would be really better if there is a change in everything for the good of the students…..I belong to the Computer Science stream and so making a mention about OSes and networks. But i feel that the situation is much similar for the students of other branches as well. The best that can be done is to give the task of setting the syllabus to a group of industrial people from various great companies like Sun, Cisco, Google, GE, GM, TVS etc for he various branches. This would be really helpful.
The other option available for the students to learn the latest trends is through forums.The habit of creating and using forums should be developed so that the students join together and discuss with each other the latest trends in the markets and the coolest features that a product has. Our college is leading by example in this aspect by having lots of forums or communities, mailing list etc. Just for example, our college has a highly active goups for GNU/Linux called the GLUGOT. We have user gourps opensolaris, .Net , operating systems and Networks as well. It is with the help of these forums that most of us learn many practical stuff related to computers. We are helped to a great extent by our alumnis who are now in high positions in various popular companies including Sun, Cisco, RedHat, Spikesource and so on.
Hi Bala,
I just stumbled onto your blog and it is interesting reading. I completed my BE degree in 2000 and am presently working in IT.
Having done my master’s degree here in Chicago, I can tell you that the problem in India is not the syllabus. Throughout my master’s program, any course work related to a particular technology is frowned upon. So, no .NET, JAVA ,etc except when they are needed to implement an idea (e.g., learning OO may require JAVA, but no learning JAVA APIs).
Rather the problem in India is the quality of teachers and , yes, the students. I went to a third rate college, so YMMV:
How many of your professors do research work? How many have developed complex real world systems? How many have written a small compiler or kernel? Even when I was in college, there was this idea that ‘our teachers are great’ – there was no thought of criticism unless, of course, a staff member is a grouch.
Reg. the students – our only aim while studying seems to be to get a job. The students here have a love for knowledge (of course there are exceptions). They will not learn something if they do not like it. They also have interests in a wide variety of subjects – literature, music, etc. I once had a student in a DB class who was majoring in English & who took this class ‘because it sounds cool’. He implemented a simple DBMS in Lisp and got an A.
The students here also enjoy life – they study hard (we in India do not work 1/2 as much as these guys), they party hard, they play sports, etc.
The syllabus can be improved. But compared to the other problems, it is not a big one.
Anyway, thanks for the blog – I haven’t been home in 6 years and seeing pictures and Tamil names made me very happy.
NANDRI!
Raja