India Graduates Millions, But Too Few Are Fit to Hire
As an Indian student who tried to get through the "system", I can relate to this. I was really into computers and programming in high school, so I decided to go into the engineering stream in the "+2" years (basically, 11th and 12th grades, as opposed to the biology stream, which supposedly preps you for medical school). I remember the parental and peer pressure particularly well: my dad was pretty much opposed to it because he felt taking biology would "lead to more options later", but I was not convinced.  Most of my friends suffered through the biology classes, and yet ended up in engineering degrees at college (and for the most part, are working at either Infosys or Wipro now. <i>No one</i> is doing anything even remotely related to medicine.)<p>The last few years of high school was basically hell for me: the government subsidies OP's article mentions are limited just for the biggies (IITs and RECs), and the chances of getting into them are very slim. You have to get through series of examinations that over the years have gotten very _very_ tough: they basically expect you to know things in Physics, Chemistry and Math that - atleast in the US - are not taught till the third year of college. Forget about high school - I went to IIT coaching centers, and was very miserable because I had no real interest in any of the subjects - I wanted to learn CS, dammit - why was I mugging up organic chem formulae?<p>Its not even worth it to consider joining other colleges. Job options are limited, but the worst part is they all require <i>huge</i> "donations" upfront for a laughable experience (both in terms of the teaching talent and curriculum).<p>Long story short, I didn't end up getting a sufficiently high ranking in the entrance exams (my choices in the placement, if I remember right, were either metallurgy in IIT or mechanical engineering in REC: the top 400 had basically grabbed up all the CS degrees. Remember: over 400,000 students write the exam every year, so almost everyone ends up in a field they're not interested in.) so I decided to take a huge student loan and come study in the US. I don't regret the decision: I'm now doing what I love, and have gotten _so_ much more exposure than my peers back home it's not even funny.<p>When I went back to India to do an internship (and enjoy the vacation) a couple of years back, I was appalled by how little enthusiasm most people have about the work they'd end up doing.<p>Horrible stuff.