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Monday, August 13, 2007

Engineers produced in India, China: It's the QUALITY, stupid!

How many more times do we need to have rammed down our throats that India and China are creaming the U.S. when it comes to the numbers of engineers that are being produced yearly? Surely it must millions a year by now, right?

Okay, I'm being sarcastic. China produced more than 600,000 engineers in 2005, and India produces nearly 500,000 technical graduates annually. But even if those numbers are greater than the numbers in the U.S., there’s another element under scrutiny: what’s the quality of the education these students are receiving in India and China?

In many cases, the quality is not very good and they are having a hard time getting hired, according to a recent report in Newsweek International. Well, it’s no wonder that’s the case if engineering students in India show up for class and there are no teachers, as the report mentions.

The report offers many interesting points, particularly on the quality of education the graduates receive. For example, corporate recruiters in both India and China say there is a shortage of qualified applicants. "Out of the huge number of engineering and science graduates that India produces, only 25 to 30 percent can be regarded as suitable," says Kiran Karnik, head of the National Association of Software and Services Companies.

The reason, the report says, is underfunding and other factors that have produced serious educational crises in India and China. The authors quote M.A. Pai, who taught at the Indian Institute of Technology in Kanpur, who warns the "lack of highly trained people at the Ph.D. level in both sciences and engineering will be a serious setback to India becoming a knowledge economy."

I’m not saying we don’t have a real problem on our hands when it comes to the numbers of engineers we’re cranking out yearly in this country compared to China and India. I just think we need to look at the high-quality technical institutions we have here, the U.S. citizens who attend them and are receiving fantastic educations, and remember that we’re looked on as a world technology leader for some very good reasons.

Let’s not become enamored with engineers educated in India and China because they have the reputation of being whiz kids in math and science. Let’s look at the whole picture.

Reader Comments

(Add your comments)

at 8/13/2007 12:42:34 PM, Bernie Lenders said:
the confusion about the quality comes from thinking that "all" Indians and chinese are brilliant judging for those that are really brilliand and have been educated further outside their countries. Furthermore, we understand in their advantage, that those educated outside their own enviroment have the drive and the deication of the immigrant and it makes a real difference.

at 8/13/2007 12:44:39 PM, Joe said:
Tell this to the stupid CEO's to....Please!

at 8/13/2007 1:11:52 PM, Pradeep said:
Before you comment about the 'quality of engineers' produced by India and the 'quality of education' available in India in its various technical and management colleges, do visit the country at least once. Am sure it'll be an eye opener!

at 8/13/2007 7:36:18 PM, Om said:
Let us accept that Indian and Chinese have the advantage of the basic math and Physics. Students from these Countries do quite good for master and PhD studies in US, compared to the US citizen in the same class. Don''t forget that US picks up around 100,000 engineers every year coming from Indian colleges alone. Not for better challenge in work, but mainly because in US start salary for such engineers is around 60k/yr vis a vis 5k/yr in India. More than 370 millions salaried workers in India still make less than half a dollar a day. People in these two countries have lot of reasons to work hard and progress and get still better and thus creative. TIME is on their side.

at 8/14/2007 3:10:34 AM, Baskaran said:
Indians and Chinese may have less articulation and presentation skills than the native English speaking countries after their basic degree in engineering or science. Technically I do not think Indian or Chinese is inferior - when they can get through the tough competition to get into engineering or science - already they are cream of people. Its only the headless corporate asses who try to find cheapest labor in the third world countries and try to blame the Qaulity. Even big corporations go to sub contract houses and ask them to give engineers for $40K / year in US + base salary in India. The engineer gets only $20K / year. 20K goes to the subcontractor''s pocket just to locate that engineer. How to expect quality? There are mind set shift necessary when you hire talent.

at 8/14/2007 7:00:32 AM, mcqueen said:
Are you saying engineers produced in India, China are stupid, and Indian and Chinese graduates produced in US are smart? true.

at 8/17/2007 1:42:37 AM, NoName said:
If it is a problem, then what you said is meanless. If it is not a problem, then what you said is stupid.

at 8/17/2007 5:03:36 AM, Larry said:
There is a company that everyone of us know of and many of us use their design software that 2+ years ago outsourced maintenance of their code to India. That world class design software was recently discontinued because of the enormous number of bugs introduced in just two years of upgrades.

at 8/20/2007 9:48:36 AM, rhaudiogeek said:
You can pick basically whatever topic and/or issue and argue for or against. It all depends on what data and/or evidence you pick to justify your thought. There are always two faces to a coin. To write an article of this nature you need to do the following: #1 Visit these countries. #2. Do a detailed study on the educational institutions and the entire education system. #3. Lastly provide an unbiased opinion and leave it to the readers to draw their own conlusion. That in my opinion is "True Journalism" Please don't slander a public medium to voice your own insecurities.

at 8/21/2007 5:46:51 AM, Kung Lu said:
'quality of engineers' cannot be decided taking few people in to consideration.As a whole the quality of engineers and education was quite good in china and India.

at 8/24/2007 2:35:32 AM, Calvin said:
People around the globe scared abpit Indians & chineese

at 8/24/2007 2:39:13 AM, Frank said:
Do you think US or Western education system is greater than Indian & chineese system. In american system any one can get degree without any knowledge. Is it possible in China/ India?

at 8/29/2007 9:47:19 AM, Paganelo said:
-trying to create average Indian, Chinese, Russian and American engineer quality metrics is absolutely wrong and stupid. I know numbers of excellent engineers originated from India, China and other parts of the world including America. “Good quality engineer” is product of education, work experience, and opportunities to grow. Moving entry level positions from US to “cheap labor shores” is deadly wrong, because it distracts soil where engineers are created. Engineers in same Corporation should be paid equaly in different countries, period. Looking how fast China’s and India’s economy grow I see as we are lacking good and well educated politicians here. We must consider to import more of them from abroad.

at 8/29/2007 9:35:23 PM, RyanB said:
The article is correct. In India, there have been a large number of private engineering colleges who give admissions based solely on who can afford their high tuitions. The teachers in these colleges rarely have PhDs. Some are alumni of these very colleges. Indian superiority in Math and Science is a Myth. Indian schools K-12 are essentially exam oriented rot systems. How many Indians have a intuitive knowledge of calculus, thermodynamics? They learn math and science like riding a bike. That's why India has filed for very few patents or invented anything at all in last 50 yrs. They can't. Indian Engineers have a "Mantra" Approach to Engineering. Essentially a long list of cookbook ideas learned along the way. Many Indian Engineers take undergraduate American courses once they come to US to "relearn" their basics. Indian industry encourages a "Tool Centric" approach to engineering. The fastest, bravest hacker is most rewarded.

at 8/30/2007 10:57:54 AM, Paganelo said:
"In <US>, there have been a large number of private engineering colleges who give admissions based solely on who can afford their high tuitions. The teachers in these colleges have PhDs. Some are alumni of these very colleges. <US homegrown scientists> superiority in Math and Science is a Myth. <US> schools K-12 are essentially exam oriented rot systems. "

at 8/31/2007 3:22:20 AM, AR said:
Unfortunately this article speaks about an "unconvenient truth". The problem is that we are still too "political correct" to have a critical point of view. These days (for couple of years) it is considered extremely rude to be critical...

at 8/31/2007 2:23:36 PM, NS said:
IMHO - the Indian engineering education system is geared towards churning out graduates who are able to regurgitate whatever they are fed enabling them to score well in “standardized” tests and known situations. There is no emphasis on creative or out of the box thinking. Please highlight a single software of hardware innovation indigenously originating out of India?

at 9/1/2007 12:03:29 AM, AB said:
The points mentioned in the article do make sense and to me are valid to a considerable extent but the purpose of the article seems unclear. It feels as if the writer is intimidated by the techies from india n china, like she''s trying to prove to others that they arent competent. The number of good engineers(i.e. able technically) produced is still a great lot more than that in US.

at 9/2/2007 12:00:19 PM, RyanB said:
If Indian Engineers consider themselves the Best, why are they underpricing themselves with their American, European counterparts ?? Japanese always price their cars above Koreans and the Germans demand a markup for their "German Work". Incidentally India's State Owned BSNL imported Run of the Mill GSM Cell phone switching software for Nokia-Siemens at $3.4B. Sounds like India does not have confidence in the quality it's own workmanship. Nearly all Autoricksaws in India are being retrofitted by LPG Methane engines made in Italy !!! India's engineers are willing to sell their "World Class" skills below market price. Why does the Indian IT industry have no confidence it's own quality ? Why should they be scared of losing business to Kenya, Brazil, Vietnam if they consider themselves as the Best ? Why Can't Infosys, Tata tell their US customers, pay us more than you pay Americans because we are simply smarter, better trained etc . ?

at 9/3/2007 9:40:37 PM, theyCallMeStupid said:
This is the most stupidest and narrowest article I have ever seen.

at 9/4/2007 6:36:03 AM, Guglielmo said:
The bottom line here is that a bunch of guys are losing their jobs and so everyone is running scared. Indian,Chinese or Eastern European engineers are no better than anyone else. We see herds of them in the US....most of them are certainly bright and hardworking (typical immigrants). Hard work and diligence usually pays off. As for the engineers who stay in India,China or wherever.......the quality of education is certainly lacking. Not too many come out of IITs or Beijing Univ. etc. Almost Zero practical,creative work ever happens. RyanB described it very well above. However, the type of work engineers have been doing in the US can easily be picked up from a cookbook.....low level technician type stuff. Lesser skilled, cheaper workers elsewhere can perform these tasks....so let them. Kind of like the auto business or lathe operators. How many of you want to be "lathe operators"?? doing stuff like DRC/LVS etc??!!

at 9/6/2007 12:22:07 PM, KB said:
I remember the indian and asian engineering students from my time at EE school (right here in New York State). They definitely weren't any brighter than us 'natives'... what they DID do however was work themselves to the bone. That's the real difference

at 9/6/2007 12:53:45 PM, Lightning Rod said:
At it's best engineering is a creative pursuit. Some engineers work as not much more than glorified clerks. They get that work because they at least (partially) speak the technical language of their particular specialty. An engineering education is like a set of keys, it gets you in the door, but not much else. This applies to most other types of education as well. We need to make sure we stay ahead of the curve by putting more emphasis on fostering creativity, and at least a little risk-taking.

at 9/6/2007 1:03:27 PM, DR said:
"Engineering" is so much more than the ability to implement a technical task or design something on paper. It is the ability to communicate and understand the problem, consider all avenues of solutions and choose the best one with an objective view, implement that solution with an eye toward the customer's viewpoint - Continually asking yourself if it solves *their* problem, and then documenting the solution so that it can be replicated by others down the road. Whether cultural, national, or faculty-based, I see that some of these pieces are missing from many of the foreign engineering workers that we hire. It varies per individual, but more often than not it is either communication or "free thinking" that is lacking. When you read case studies of outsourcing gone bad, it is frequently due to a breakdown or inability to communicate the problem correctly up front. Rest assured, though, that these schools are not going to give up or go away, and they are staffed by some very bright people who will eventually get all the pieces right.

at 9/17/2007 12:38:06 PM, njineer said:
Unfortunately, many CEO's are either ignorant of any deltas relating to candidate quality, or blatantly choose to ignore it to ensure their annual bonus.

at 9/24/2007 9:27:22 PM, Ralph said:
What a load of crap. It comes down to the individual. Just look at the posts, tells you enough about the distribution of intellect, character and approach. Just the one question: How many U.S. Engineers would be as good as they are, had they had to study under the circumstances our colleagues from India and China do? It annoys the crap out of me to read the whining, while we continue to expect cheap consumer goods, electronics! - etc., etc., bla, bla. If you can't justify your value to the company - or the company can't justify the costs, or it's just pure profit - greed - remember that the next time you look at your stock portfolio, get in your car, turn you TV on... I don't like the idea of losing my hob either, but it's OUR society, not there's....

at 10/2/2007 10:42:12 PM, Umair Younus said:
Pradeep and Om are correct. Engineers in China and India are competent and gradually moving to excellence. However, if someone is to blame is the Education system only. I think improvement takes time, when engineers from these countries go to the US they perform as good as anybody. May be you should visit sometime.

at 10/18/2007 3:27:23 AM, Sumit Daripa said:
I feel that this article is baseless and the writer is aggrieved.I would like to welcome the writer to India....please come and have a view of the infrastructure and quality of education that is being provided to the engineers.It is marvellous. Do not post articles out of personal vengeance.

at 12/4/2007 12:00:35 AM, Mattew said:
There is a programme on TV stating by one GE Head that USA has many specialised domain experts, India doesnt have, this statement includes engineering domain and software domain. indian software lives on dollar strength and not on hightech people, afterall software is not hightech, its junk work done by key pushers Indian software Industry is very dirty and the competition is very dirty,they think they are doing high tech work, they cheat the US companies for projects, and also the salary figures are hidden from the US clients(the one who outsources the projects to India), they say a salary figure of 1lakh and we have MS students as our employees, but tje salary given is just 60K rupees/month and the guys are jsut BE,MCA graduates, this is how they cheat and remaining money is going into black accounts, also decieving the stock holders too. The people think that they do high tech work, but what they do here is just clerical work by typing some code. Microsoft seem to take over the world by tying up with Intel last time in chip fabrication and certain code protection issues. Now it wants to launch a TV too which is web enabled. This may include a built in popcorn machine and a soda maker too for the TV viewers. They seem to control the TV, and controlling the Internet with their code and industries with their software, they seem to take over the world....

at 12/4/2007 12:17:51 AM, Mattew said:
Some More additions There is a programme on TV stating by one GE Head that USA has many specialised domain experts, India doesnt have, this statement includes engineering domain and software domain. indian software lives on dollar strength and not on hightech people, afterall software is not hightech, its junk work done by key pushers, most people here in idnai doesnt know the calculus basics like why a derivative is used and whats the limit in the derivative is doing, they just blindly mugup. There is one fellow here called IIT Ramaiah lecturer who teaches just limits and he knows only that, and makes students mugup to get entrance to a dirty competitive entrance exams. Indian software Industry is very dirty and the competition is very dirty,they think they are doing high tech work, they cheat the US companies for projects, and also the salary figures are hidden from the US clients(the one who outsources the projects to India), they say a salary figure of 1lakh and we have MS students as our employees, but tje salary given is just 60K rupees/month and the guys are just BE,MCA graduates, this is how they cheat and remaining money is going into black accounts, thereby decieving the stock holders too. The people think that they do high tech work, but what they do here is just clerical work by typing some code, a code is a format or rule developed by some company and one fellow has to tune it to their end application, for eg Vb or C, also wireles applications like cdma, tdma, etc are not technologies they are just formats and one has to learn each companies format. Microsoft seem to take over the world by tying up with Intel last time in chip fabrication and certain code protection issues. Now it wants to launch a TV too which is web enabled. This may include a built in popcorn machine and a soda maker too for the TV viewers. They seem to control the TV, and controlling the Internet with their code and industries with their software, they seem to take over the world.... by Anonumous Mattew

at 12/10/2007 1:39:19 PM, STE said:
Unanalyzed article : Summary : India has 60% population, who can grasp and apply, innovate which is being taught and definitely only 2% on domain experts. US has far lesser general population with same ability but more domain experts (5%). Every Indian has social, economic problem, which impedes him to excel in his/her domain. Social : Pressure to support himself and his/her family. Fierce competition to excel. Economic : Lack of funding for colleges. Most talented cannot attend engineering due to lack of economic support. Regarding the lower cost, I would say that supply is more for lower cost, not necessary mean that quality is lower, which anyway is never acceptable.

at 2/4/2008 8:27:26 AM, Big Al said:
Sorry to be a kill joy folks but I find this discussion meaningless. Engineering excellence in America was achieved because individuals in America sought to become excellent for their own personal reasons. The decline of American engineering falls into the same category. Americans no longer want to work that hard when they can get Indian and Chinese employees to do the dirty work for them. The Indians need to wake up to the fact that discovering 1000 ways to program "Hello World!" will not solve the world's problems or theirs.

at 2/16/2008 4:09:56 PM, INDIAN said:
I am an Indian IT professional and after reading the article I feel proud of my nation and myself that even though we dont get the proper facilities still we are in demand for good reasons.You like it or you dont,you accept it or you dont ,the fact is that the IQ level and the knowledge level which Indians have is what that gets them the entry to US.Given a choice I would not like inferior nations people crowding in mine, but from a CEOs point of view,hmmm,why not get them when they are the BEST and COST EFFECTIVE.Are you geeting it dumbo.BTW were you Banglored?

at 5/20/2008 4:09:01 AM, indian said:
how can someone simply say chinease have low engineering background.they have a history in building bridges and railroads.(eg:great wall of china)and they are the highly IQ''d people in d world.not only chineas the entire east asian region''s have good talent in engineering skills.

at 7/4/2008 2:56:20 PM, Indian IT said:
hah hah our American engineers in Seattle are so stupid they can't calculate circuit resistance for the drawings we send them from over here (Bangalore, India). Also, I see them get foxed over elementary calculations like interpolation of data, control systems situations, simple trigonometric functions like the value of sin in radians takes them 4-5 hours! Considering many of these computations were historically developed by WHITE people, their descendants are doing an awful job. So, what are the Americans in my office good at? Let's see. They speak GOOD ENGLISH and can pontificate and lecture for hours. Let them face real-world problems: most of the brainy, difficult stuff has already been outsourced to India. Every year American engineers come to our company to "train us natives in their westernized ways". Let me tell you - they don't even BOTHER auditing real technical things for us engineers. All they talk is management, management and more management. Indians will continue to have a field day in Science and Technology. Wait till Chandrayana blasts into orbit this Septemeber. It will remove whatever suspicion people had about Indian technological capability. My friend works in that project and he says even Russians and Japanese are almost begging to tie up with ISRO for future missions. That's because they're not purely Western nations and don't have the baggage of "colonial racist" mindset like these Anglo countries do. They have lot more respect for India and Indians' worth. I suggest all Indian PhD's and researchers based in the USA to return home and contribute to the development of our country (including American citizens of Indian origin). See how their economy cripples in a matter of weeks. Why work for countries which continue to treat you like second-class citizens and will never fully acknowledge your contribution. It's about time some of these arrogant Americans and Brits bend over and kiss some Indian ass because that's what they really deserve to do.

at 7/4/2008 3:13:36 PM, Indian IT said:
Just a case in point. 8-9 months back, the British government introduced a set of racist immigration laws which were designed to keep talented Indians out of Britain. 1. They made it mandatory for skilled Indian HSMP professionals to make $60,000 p.a. in India which is impossible because this is an astronomical amount for our skilled professionals to make. 2. For Indian students in the UK, they were planning to introduce legislation including 9000-pound "bonds". Right now, we keep hearing stories like a severe shortage of financial professionals in London which is losing its global financial center status to cities like Hong Kong, Taipei, Sydney, Moscow and even Mumbaui. As a result, they're making swift legislation to allow Indian finance professionals to come to the UK without those draconian measures. Also, Indian students in addition to getting a reprieve on bond money, can now legally work for 2 years in the UK (it used to be 1 year before). Racist arrogance is not good for you, Anglo monkeys. You'll simply fade into history for your oppressive mentality. Learn to respect Indians.

at 7/25/2008 6:36:47 AM, mt said:
Dear Americans, are you jealous??!!!. You should stop being so arrogant and instead of wasting your time getting angry, you should start working hard again. The world is not waiting for you to wake up.......

at 7/25/2008 6:41:22 AM, mt said:
by the way, you are not Americans, you are USA Citizens. America is much more than USA........

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