College, Student and Luxury dreams

Yesterday evening I got a call from a known fellow, who is in his last year of engineering. He called me seeking an internship opportunity at my company. Sounds cool na, for me too, it was casual, but during the call I was shocked about the thought process and the environment of the college students now a days. First thing he asked if my organization can provide him minimum 11 month internship. When I asked why he required so? He replied that he doesn’t want to do a major project and for that he need to show an internship certificate to college. On further he said his last year of engineering does not have any course work, no subjects, no college attendance, etc. I said what kind of college is this, engineering is not so lenient course, on an average there are 80+ subjects including lab works, which at least takes 8 semesters. For which he replied his ‘private’ university have it’s own curriculum. On further asking he revealed that his BTech is with specialization in AI and machine learning. Okay, that’s good, but what about basic subjects like OS, algorithm analysis, compiler design, software engineering? Answer is, it was not in his overall engineering course. Sounds idiotic right. In that case, he should be good in AI and ML, isn’t it? but contradicting to that, only few course books were there that too didn’t covered fundamentals (which I studied even though my engineering is with no specialization). He never heard of fuzzy logic, no A star algorithm, not even basic random forest algorithm. He further said, his most of the classmates are getting internship on web development, but he wants only data science. The reason provided is, web development is a child’s play and a small work which failures do. After a casual talk, he said normally after engineering, people gets penny salary of 4 LPA, he want’s 14 minimum. I was surprised on hearing that. Really? 4 LPA as initial package is penny for him? that too after not even knowing basics of computer fundamentals and programming skills, just by getting a theoretical specialization on ML and AI?.

After the call I was just shocked by the thought process and even more the surprising part was how private college/universities lure little minds over lucrative packages they might get after getting a degree with specializations. Now a days every second university have BTech with ML and AI, or BTech with IOT and cloud computing. But not telling that basic computer science and mathematics is not in the syllabus. And thus depriving students from knowing exact computer science. The colleges are enforcing big dreams on students and not showing the actual reality. 14 LPA minimum package is not even an average package in top institutes of India but here private institutes are advertising in such a way that their placements starts from such high package. We have 5 days weekdays, but colleges are now running with 4 days weekdays, that too 7th and 8th semester without college.

I think, education in India needs a controlling hand. Too many autonomous organizations are ruining life and thoughts of students just because they want to earn extra money.