Padmadip:
Welcome to the Conversations with Reinforced Engineers Podcast, India’s first podcast for and by civil engineers. Join us on our journey to simplify and bring your experiences, straight from the industry. This is your host Padmadip Joshi along with the co-host Gokul G Kumar and E S Krishna Ram. So, let’s jump right into it.
Hello all, and welcome back to the channel Conversations with Reinforced Engineers, a podcast series. We are very thankful to all our audience members we have successfully across around 150 subscriptions on all the platforms. So today’s topic for discussing is educational system, a story from engineers mind. So, if we talk about the educational system, we have a long story to talk for India, like it is more of a feeling it is more of a concern for our parents for the students like which stream we are going to select. And if talking specifically of the engineering colleges in India, the situation is bit dicey, like every year we are saying that engineering seats are been cut off by the AICTE because of different reasons: like the institutes are not been able to get the minimum requirement standard set by AICTE, students are not able to cope up with the course and these are the very common issues we are facing, even the unemployment is one of the growing concern. So as part of today’s discussion, we’ll be covering these things, the mindset of the students, how we selected this? What is the future opportunities and concern for the engineers and such stories, we’ll be starting today. So if you have any questions if you have any suggestions to say, Please, you can mail us to cwrepodcast@gmail.com we’d love to answer it, and we’d love to hear your feedback.
So now coming to Gokul. Gokul. As you are aware with today’s topic. So what were your initial thoughts when you decided to choose the stream, as for the further study? Can you share your few views on it Gokul?
Gokul:
So I’ll start with the why, in India we are too much oriented towards professional education, what happens in most of the families is from the childhood. The children are motivated to become a particular or to take a particular future carrier, what happens is these things are engraved into their mind since childhood. So, this thing is correctly depicted in this movie 3 Idiots. There’s a famous dialog tu doctor banega ya engineer?
So what this thing depicts is the difference between what the passion of student is and bought in what direction, they are getting the carrier. I believe that there is a middle class mentality also, we believe that seeking an education is for seeking jobs now also many people believe that if we do engineering, we will get a decent job. If we’ll pass from a decent college, and our life will be secured. So, I believe that there was a situation when the supply and demand. Basically matched. At that time, earlier only five or 10% of the student population opted for engineering or doctor stream, so what happened was, you really had reputed government colleges and some of the private Institute’s, which used to coach students in engineering, then they used to get a good job after that. But now the situation is totally changed. Now we have a high supply, but we don’t have that demand. So there is a mismatch in supply and demand and the quality is also decreasing day by day, and I think Krishna ram would like to add much on this.
Krishna:
So Gokul thank you for that introduction regarding the current state of education system in India, actually some of the things that you are shedding some light upon is actually true but I would like to have a very contrarian view on this because see India a very huge country we have around 1.3 billion people, we still lacking the basic infrastructure or, or whatever parameter you take on the science technology engineering and and other fields, we are definitely lacking between counterparts from United States or even European countries, where we are lacking. It’s as Gokul said mainly on the quality aspects. So, what he correctly mentioned, our education system got privatized some time back is so that move towards privatization was much needed because there were a couple of like, literally, you could count the number of engineers from a town or a village, and there was genuine need for that privatization to happen, but somewhere along the lines, what happened is that privatization happened a lot of people got the opportunity to pursue, all these kind of white collar kind of jobs, or say even education but what happened is that quality of the lessons that they were taught was very low, so So currently, Gokul also mentioned about the supply and demand, I guess, there will always be demand for good doctors, good engineers, there is always demand for that, where we are lacking is that even if there are a requirement for 1000 civil engineers, the situation is such that the education system is not able to provide thousand good civil engineers, that is the biggest problem.
Yeah, so I would like to take this opportunity to say, a very interesting statistics here recently News India express shared this statistics that if you talk about academic year 2008 and 2009, there were around 8,00,000 seats available for engineering students, including UG and PG. It quite boosted somewhere around 2012 to 15 to near around 18 lakh seats, then if you look at the statistics of 2018 and 19 it drastically fell by four lakh seats. So, can you, can you see the difference? It is not only one of the concern that we are talking Krishna rightly mentioned about the requirement of good quality professionals like when you say okay we are going to nurture thousand good engineers, you require at least 100 good professionals to teach them what are the industry outlooks and it doesn’t only require a PhD degree it also required a good sound industry knowledge also. So what are your thoughts on that Gokul?
Yes PD, you have rightly said that because core infrastructure, it’s a thing, that is threatening our education department. So what happening is as Krishna told the number of private engineering colleges are increasing. And they are not able to maintain that quality, that earlier we had. So, it’s happening, all the institutions like IITs we don’t have a lot of seats over there. And now, what’s happening is, there is very much less exposure towards practical things I believe. And I recently read a newspaper as you have said that more than 200 colleges have been shut down due to poor infrastructure.
What they lack is the best labs, the best teachers who guide the students, so there is periodic visit to all the AICTE institutions, so what happens is when faculty is, when an experienced faculty go there and check, there is no good labs. There are no correct infrastructure for students to learn, there is no atmosphere or faculties for them, they report to their higher authority and as a result, these colleges get closed. So this is this is what happens with these colleges and not only in any particular state, it’s happening in whole India. So, Krishna, you believe the same?
Yes, I do believe that but the fact of the matter is that such colleges should never have been allowed to run right? So, now these below grade colleges are, whose qualities are below average, there is no harm in closing them down, because I personally don’t believe that they might have ever contributed anything, very meaningful so sure, there are a couple of very privileged students even coming from such colleges, but that cannot be held to the college right? It is based on what you say capacity and the capability of that student that the college was never doing anything because if it was if it would have been providing good labs and good facilities for those students. That being said, another, maybe a bit controversial opinion I would say, and I don’t know how much of this is true around India but one issue that we face is that we are taught by faculties, who are taught by other faculties, or these faculties what happened is that, they don’t have the much needed industry knowledge or I’m not rude or something like that, but that is what is happening, our faculty, our professors they do a BTech, they do an MTech, they learn how to teach students, and then they come and teach us, but there are certain institutions where this is not true, where the quality of faculties and professors are given much importance, and they are sourced from who are actually practicing professionals, and what is interesting is that the result that we get from such institutions and the quality of the students that we get from such institution where the faculty or the professors are actually trained on site and then they are sharing their knowledge that they got from the industry, I guess that that really has a lot of difference when you compare two colleges side by side with those differences being primarily, those faculties, what do you think PD regarding this.
Padmadip:
I agree with the point current education system relies on the professor who recently graduated or they have industry experience say 5 or 10 years. The way we go for internship I think they also plan to do something very similar to update it with the technology and the changing demands.
So when you talk about technology in education system. Do you feel that we still struggle a lot when it comes to computer application or when it comes to new technology which is being adopted. I’m not saying that it is completely adopted by the industry, rarely adopted but still the educational institute takes years to adopt it, and still even after adopting they’re only giving some few fragments of it to the students. So what do you think about it Gokul?
Gokul:
I believe PD now most of the institutions are having this smart classes and good smart interfaces for the students and even they’re using it, But I believe technology should be there.
Krishna
See but Gokul, I would like to interfere, it is true that classrooms have this smart class but frankly, like, other than for sharing a PPT through those projectors What else have you seen on from those projectors?
Gokul:
Absolutely, what you’re saying is absolutely correct the faculties should come forward and the management should come forward with all the other uses of this faculties mostly prefer playing a PPT on this platform but they are not aware of that, we can also do some other steps or we can extend students more in a very good way through this means.
Padmadip:
That’s a very great concern raised by Gokul. So Gokul. This is from institutional insight, but if you don’t from a student perspective, what changes do you expect to see in students, mindset, how they should cope up with the kind of challenges do you think we still like in doing some research by our self, are we aware with all the resources, technologies available in the market. So is your take on that?
Gokul:
Yes PD, you rightly pointed out, this thing. As a student, we always ignored what we have in our college. So, our libraries and eLearning platforms, whatever, which is provided by a college, you usually ignored it, and as a student, there was opportunities which is provided to us in our college days, but most of us are reluctant to take that. So I believe from students side also there should be active participation, so that their personality and their skill can be developed.
Krishna:
Actually it’s true, what is the biggest drawback or where, our education system failed very miserably is that it failed to create genuine interest in the minds of people. See I’ll try and bring up two instances where this was proved very wrong or, like, what would have been done.
Me and Gokul had this classmate Gokul Santhosh back in the Btech days. So you might remember him trying to model this water tank in a 3d Software. Because see, I will just give the brief situation so that our audience can also better understand. So I guess it was design of steel structures classes the design was going so fast, we literally had no idea, we know that okay this is their This is their horizontal brace vertical brace that goes their bottom plate cover plate and a lot of stuff we’re going above our head. And this guy Gokul, he decided, Okay, I know that some of the students in our classes not understanding what the teacher is saying. So he took the effort to make a 3d model on a 3d modeling software back then he learned that by himself. He uploaded it on a website, and he shared it with the class. So it was an interactive 3d model you can just swipe it and have a 360 view around that subject. I mean, around that object and all those students who saw that 3d model was in a better situation to understand what that design was. But the thing is, the education system, never encouraged the person to take that much effort in understanding what is happening right. So, if this if the system was able to create that curiosity in the mind of that student, then I would say, 90 percentage of the work on the part of the system is solved, then and there itself. So that is one part. So what happens if the education system can do that to every single person is See, this is just one student doing a lot of extra work so that the other students also benefit actually he shared this stat around two or three months back around. I guess that 3d model was viewed around 1200 times. Our class had a strength of around, 60. So just think there are other 1200 people who are searching for 3d models of that design online so, and they stumbled upon the design that he made and uploaded.
So just think, if the system can create the curiosity in the minds of all the students who are learning in college, the difference that it would have on the entire society would be very drastic. So that is one point. And, and another example I would like to quote
Actually I was recently I was going through this online courses like on Coursera edX and stuff like that so they have this course by Harvard University, actually is trying to learn computer science, I don’t know why?
PD, so you saw the first hour right?
Padmadip:
The way explains the scenario the way present example it’s beautiful like how simply you can explain the definition that was fantastic!!
Krishna:
So that that was one, or what do you say, I wanted to bring up that example because he even he was using ppts but you can learn from that PPT you have to listen to him to understand the PPT was just in support system right so I actually, I guess, all of you can just go and listen to that one hour of video on a computer science introduction to computer science at Howard CS50 x is it’s freely available on YouTube, it just shows you how different the teaching system is abroad, when compared to what we have in India, it is like day and night, it is that different.
So, two examples that I wanted to share regarding curiosity and kindling interest in the minds of the students.
Padmadip:
I think Gokul and the audience will be thanking you for this, it’s very beautiful you came up with that. So Gokul?
Gokul:
Yes, Krishna you pointed it drop it rightly even I was speaking with one of my friend who is in Germany. So he said the right thing that there is segregation based on the passion in the fourth grade itself. If I want to become an engineer, or I have to take some professional education, then that person is segregated and then there will be a different curriculum for him. And if one person is like he believes in skilled working and he’s not having that passion in it, so he can offer another thing like for example carpentry, or some masonry, but the difference between these two jobs there is, they are equally paid there. That’s the difference. A M. Tech structural engineer who graduated from Germany might get a little more than what a carpenter he used to earn per day. There is no difference, basically no difference between the pay for there are getting, so that’s why people have more going on.
Krishna:
Gokul before going on before going in, I would like to just add a very small point. See, even if the difference in salary between a carpenter and structural engineer having an MS in Germany might not be that different. But what is stunning is that the social respect that those two people get there is the same. And that is something that I feel lagged behind very badly in India
Gokul:
Yeah. Because see, when, when you are getting same social respect, when you’re having same salary when you’re when you’re happy with your life, then see that’s the mindset of the people there. So I think there should be some change in curriculum, so that all these factors can be incorporated in our syllabus also.
Padmadip:
true gokul so now that you raised the question of foreign education system in Indian education system. So do you think we still lack in collaborative opportunities for the student, like, You might have heard that government colleges nowadays are giving an opportunity to the students to take one course at a foreign universities, which they have tied up with. So do you think more such collaborations should be done, we should bring up more faculties and students from the institute’s, and we should send our students to know like what do you think’s happening in their industry and where we are making or where we are good at because if you talk of Indian education and students, we are very good with the statistics and mathematical formula. But when we start working on the field which still lack in, some of the aspects to handle the site, some of the aspects to look the project from different perspective. So, what do you think about it Gokul.
Gokul:
Yes pd you have rightly pointed it out. It is a very necessary thing like student exchange or faculty exchange program in our curriculum. So, it will give exposure to all things happening in the world to our faculties and students also so that they can go there and they get that exposure and they come back to India and implement this in India. So, yes its really a thing which should be implemented.
Krishna:
Okay, so I can see we have been talking about the educational system, our faculties, or colleges, and even foreign education and how stuff like that is happening there. So, would you guys like to share about the impact that our parents mindset, have on our child’s education, and how that matters to the future of the child.
Padmadip:
Krishna you’re again started talking about circle of life. It is really hard to decode like going in our parents mind and what we are actually looking to do as a profession. So if I tell you my story, like back in 12th and I was always looking to do mechanical engineering. I’m not very surprised to say, because all my friends are like looking to do that so I was like okay I’ll do that. Then I went to one of the seminar and they were explaining about each and every discipline like what mechanical students have to do or what civil engineers have to do and then I was like okay, I’m not at all interested into, into this aspects of engineering, so what actually I’m interested in, so again i evaluated the process. I try to visit project site with my father. And then I came to a decision ok civil engineering is something, I am ok to do with. Yeah, Krishna so you asked a very great question. So, what was your story actually.
Krishna:
Actually, before going into all that I was actually quite surprised to hear that you did, evaluate each study to understand which branch. You needed to take. I share a funny story. My parents asked me to take mechanical engineering. I was like say there are probably no girls. So no no no I will take civil engineering. That is how I ended up at civil engineer. So I guess I have been lucky with the aspects
Krishna:
of my parents because they have been really understanding, they ultimately gave in to my wishes so I guess I don’t have anything to complain on that aspect, but that is definitely not something that we hear around every day because parental pressure is something that is there. So, some people are being forced into taking engineering, doctorate, even students from seventh grade standard being forced into preparing for IAS. So, it is there, but luckily I have been saved from that Gokul Do you have anything to share.
Gokul:
Yeah. Yes, Krishna. Yeah, you have rightly said that now the mindset has totally changed not totally but most of the parents now think that they should be with their children, they should understand the passion. It’s coming up, I’d share my experience how it came to civil engineering at the time of my 12th class, some work construction work was going on in my, in my house. So I was searching all all websites and all things where should I go like what course I should opt for, and they should I divert by courier. I asked like some contractors was there in my home. So I was like, I will go, I will go to them and I will just see what they are doing their work and everything I just focus on it. So, then it came in my mind that why not. It’s a very good thing. Like construction as an industry fascinated me. Then I thought like yes I should give a try I asked more about this in from the contractors, and I mingled a lot with them. And it really helped me a lot in choosing my carrier.
Padmadip:
So yeah, that’s very interesting story said by both of you hear I wanted to highlight this one very beautiful word, which I learned back somewhere in fourth year of my engineering. It’s called brain drain. I think both of you aware with the term.
Krishna:
Yes yes yes yes yes yeah there won’t be any technical debate, without this topic.
Padmadip:
yeah so, yeah. So let’s do set a context for the audience I’m just trying to narrate the definition given by the investopedia as per tehm brain drain is a slang term, indicating substance in immigration or migration of individuals from their country to other foreign countries to either cater the good education, or just to have a better standard of living. So when you talk about brain drain, as per 2019 statistics, more than 85% students travelled to some other foreign Institute’s just for the higher education. And it is also raising the alarming concern for an Indian industry, because we are in a verge of developing hundred and thousands million dollars are invested in infrastructure development, and we are loosing this opportunity. So, what is your take on that Gokul like, why didn’t you go out and why did you choose to study in India.
Gokul:
Yes, when you ask this question to 12th class students we always look for like our friends are going abroad, we always look for that, and even near some of the universities even there was a trend that people go to Germany and study at that time also. So, as you rightly mentioned that brain drain, it is, it’s there. We can see a lot of examples are Indian students going abroad and they are settling there. They are exploring things there and they are getting good opportunity to become CEOs like for me know a lot of example I don’t have to mention each of them right yes it’s happening, it’s happening with this is I also look for the opportunities. But the first thing which concerns us is price will be education right like when we go abroad and we’ll study, a huge investment for that. True, true. Yeah, that was the first concern. And another thing is like we never had that awareness or no one. We never had someone who can tell us that Yeah, you can go there and you can achieve your passion, it’s something different that. That thing was never taught, or told to us at that time.
Krishna:
Yeah. So, see, I guess, for every student, you have going abroad and studying at a foreign University comes up somewhere.
Krishna:
But I always felt that I would say my playing field would be in India. And I would like to contribute to the growth of the nation as a citizen, and as a professional from India. So I thought, even if I go abroad and learn, I would ultimately want to come back to India and work here so I was like is that giving me the best What you call return on investment on learning some say, we won’t be learning is code is 456 for basics, we won’t be learning abroad so ultimately if I’m coming back to India and working here. I guess I thought it would be better if I studied here itself so maybe that might have been a very What do you say, a flawed philosophy, but that was something even, even I have thought about that. And as Gokul already mentioned, finances are always a problem because foreign education is always very expensive. And what do you say, student debt trap it’s huge. Yeah. So maybe if you’re if you’re starting with zero debt, and if you’re a good position I guess it would always be better than starting with the very big bite of educational loan.
Padmadip:
That’s very rightly mentioned by Krishna, even my initial mindset was to work in India, in terms of infrastructure development, that was the only thought from my parents as well. But, I was so passionate about staying abroad like I was so much into it because all my friends and batchmates were trying to apply and even my seniors were there. So I was like okay this is what I was looking for but I think somewhere down the line, it was not the cost structure, which was attracting me to go and study that it was the standard of living, which I was trying to gain along with the course. So that was my initial philosophy, then I started with you guys so you know the story after, but it interesting story. It’s like you talk about legacy things will change. In recent interview, the great legend, Mr A M Naik from L&T, he shared this story with the economic times, that when his son decided to move to foreign countries for he initially encouraged, but now after working so many hours in India he is thinking, Okay, that was the only mistake I made in my life. So now he’s thinking of the opportunities are in India. So, overall philosophy and things are changing, but I think it will take some time to settle it down. So now again coming back to the topic, if you talk about the practical exposure gokul, given a choice as a construction management professional. What are the five things you think it needs to be included in our course curriculum, be that engineering course curriculum or the construction management course curriculum, what are the five things which you feel like should be included,
Gokul:
Yes pd, I believe that there are a lot of changes which have to be happened, but some of them I will mention. The first thing would be more focus on research and development program in our curriculum, because we, we have a project in our final year of B. Tech or we have it in our Post Graduation also. But what happens is, most of the universities take it for namesake only and they, it’s just for namesake, they are doing research, but I believe that if R&D development programs are given due importance and if you pick up a person like if a student is too much interested in this area, you, you just find him out in the first year itself, and give him more opportunities to come forward with new things because it’s always happens that most of the good talent dies in our engineering itself, because of our curriculum. The first thing is that, then I would like to say the curriculum, there should be more additional technical advancement in our industry, than they should be faculty training programs, I’d say, because as Krishna already mentioned about the lack of training among the faculties. And one important thing is the promotion of entrepreneurship among the students, because it’s the main thing I believe you should provide the correct information about how to become an entrepreneur, or how they can come up with their own ideas. Because a lot of, even in our time also we always had some ideas in our mind that we always think about something and we try to come forward with it. But somehow, due to our curriculum or something we just drop it there and we move forward. It usually happens. So if a person is or a student is having good innovative ideas with the college should promote him. The college should promote him and help him to come forward with that. Anything else you want to
Padmadip:
say when you talk about entrepreneurship, you talk about research and development to hear opinion from Krishna. The legend is named to Krishna, we now call him Thala. So, please write in the comment section Thala. So Thala I have a very interesting question for you, you are running the show at PG institute startup club. So, what do you think why we are not able to encourage students and even faculty members to join this and promote this, what do you think will be the future do we think there will be more job opportunities if we are looking from an entrepreneur side or we should stick with a traditional job marketing.
Krishna:
see actually there are two sides to that. First thing is, most of the Indian students are never exposed to the business side of things right. See, even if you, if you go home and say to your mom or dad that you want to start a business, the first thing that they would say is they will list, a number of business failures, say that business is a risky business, say that there are financial risks involved. See we don’t feel very confident about starting a business like that is because of the environment that we are raised in only a very few percentage of parents, encourage this entrepreneurial mindset in their children. So, we were always said, You are not supposed to think in that direction. Right. So that is one aspect. The other aspect is the entire educational system is focused in such a way that you become a job seeker, not a job creator, even, even when we did four years of for B. tech. We were taught how to design stuff like say slabs columns and stuff like that. But they didn’t even teach us in simple things such as like how should you apply for a job, or how should you get a job they didn’t. They did not even teach that. And then they taught all this. So the thing with starting a company or starting a business, especially after graduation seems like a very distinct dream for most of the students, there are exceptions like people who come from business background, those who have seen what is happening behind the scenes, they, they know that okay this is the right path I should not be a job seeker, I should be a job creator see that that is why, what they say, our degrees are known as professional degrees say, because we have the capability and the capacity is on paper, to have employees with us, like we can start a company or we can start an organization with different employees, you can’t say that for I would say, ma in economics or stuff like that; differences is our degrees is professional degrees, but that is on paper, you you never see that translating into or to say, real life value. So, it’s there, it’s there I guess a lot to be changed, especially in the mindset of the students. See, the first thing you teach a student to think in that manner are thinking that fashion, you don’t already say close an entire section of business or entrepreneurship from him or her in the initial years of their life. You say that if you want to experiment because say, age, 20 to 30 is something that students should be able to experiment, even if they lose some money in the initial years is not going to be very huge right because those years are the years where you can take the maximum risk. See there are going to be failures. But if you do it enough number of times, one huge success can always offset. All the minor setbacks that you’ve ever faced. So I guess it’s a lot about the mindset and a lot to be changed over there.
Padmadip:
So that’s it guys, for the first part of two part series on the current state of education system in India, do tune in for the part two.
Gokul:
Thank you for tuning in to this week’s episode of conversations with reinforced engineers podcast. Hope you found value in the discussion and do tune in for next episodes. And in case if you haven’t already. Don’t forget to subscribe to the podcast for updates on future episodes. thank you once again and have a great day.