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A good friend of 2point6billion, Nick Polimeni, is an experienced QC engineer and conducts work in both China and India. He’s had some interesting comments to make recently to us about Engineering standards in these countries, and the potential competition with the US in technological innovation. I quote:
I’ve been working in China for the last 4 years, and have met more ‘engineers’ than I had met in the previous 30 years. Chinese students who graduate as engineers are not what we call engineers in the west. Chinese Engineers “specialize” in a given application. They’re more like technicians, by U.S. standards. They do not seem to be trained in basic engineering science, and are very deficient in such things. I have yet to meet a single one who has any familiarity for example, with the laws of thermodynamics. I’ve worked with a wide variety of them in various fields. The few who know enough to think with science, have acquired it after years of experience.
Here’s an illustration for a different field. Dentists are not trained as complete medical doctors; they’re just trained as teeth repair technicians. They are quite good at what they have been trained; but they’ve no rounded knowledge of medicine.
So, even the reported statistics, do not tell you what engineers look like.
I once gave a class on database design to a group of Indian engineers. I have to tell you, they had formulas for everything I only had generalized logic from experience. In fact, if you gave them a stringent academic test, they would all pass with flying colors, where I would most likely fail. Yet, I could design databases, and they came to me to learn it.
Now I’ve had Indian engineers sitting next to me in working environments, and I have to say that overall, they’ve been a notch above some of the American counterparts.
What is in the future? In my opinion, the Chinese will take a very long time to catch up, because there are cultural, and educational system barriers which produce a way of thinking that prevents Chinese engineers, bright as they truly are on a personal level, from competing in development with the west.
Indians are top notch when it comes to raw technology, so they are likely to catch up faster if they are not there with US engineers already.
U.S. Engineers possess something, however, which I don’t think either Indian nor Chinese has, which I believe is “educated out of them,” and that is, a thirst for going outside the box, and breaking the mold, and moving beyond the conventional.
Before counting engineers, we need to define what one is.
That is an interesting observation, and touches again on a subject that came up a few months here – political systems affecting development strategies. With the Communist system, all if for the greater good of the society, and individualism is discouraged. Yet in a democratic system, the individual is given rights and can prosper. When we analysed this in Nobel Prize Winners between India and China, both nations ran up a total of six each. Yet tellingly, the Indian Nobel Prize winners had all been educated in India, while the Chinese had been educated overseas, primarily in the US, with one of them (for literature) having his works banned in the PRC. This negative aspect of communism also seems to have spilled over into engineering development issues, and as Nick points out – it is India that is closing the gap with the US in terms of the development of innovative technologies, with China far behind.
August 6th, 2007 at 5:06 pm
Indian from the day of its independence some sixty years ago, has taken right steps to continuously upgrade the technical, business & administrative skills of its future generations.
India’s world reputed ‘Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs)’, ‘ Regional Engineering Colleges (RECs)’, ‘Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs)’, ‘Indian Institues of Science (IISs)’ and ‘Administrative Staff Colleges (ASCs)’ are a testimony to the high calibre of young Indian Technocrats & Business Managers.
Many of the engineering students from India’s IITs, in the final year of their studies, get high salaried job offers from the largest and most reputed US and UK MNCs.
The top line US IT companies have already opened their R & D centres in India and recruiting these young engineers in large numbers to use their technical skills and potential.
August 6th, 2007 at 9:43 pm
Quite a prejudiced article. Having worked with Indian Engineers and other than the ones coming out from the elite institutions I would consider the level of education to be probably worse than that imparted in China. Learning by ‘rot’ or cramming is what is encouraged in the Indian model whilst the limited practical experience doesnot worthy them of even technicians! Engineers is a far cry.
August 7th, 2007 at 2:19 am
Wow…Nick’s point of view is very valid and it is not because I am an Indian but because it is the fact. I will explain it in few pointers. I will also mention where Indians are weak and can improve
1) Contrary to what Chin Wang has to say, it is an established fact across the globe that Indian educational institutions are far more superior in their approach as well as theorotical subject coverage. And I am not talking about only premier institutions, I am talking about more than 80% of the universities in India who impart engineering degrees and Diploma.
2) I am my self a Civil Engineer, educated in one of not very elite institutions, but the way they teach Engineering itself is to take note of. First year Engineering is same for all divisions, be it Computers, Mechanical, Electrical or Civil. The Basic concepts of Engineering are taught during this first year.
3) A student after this first year can actually change his branch..i.e. from Civil to mechanical or vice versa…
4) The Indian culture is such that they have to have holistic approach in everything they do. Even in Indian companies, you will see that an engineer does multiple jobs, it may be of a foreman, or a designer or a CAD person etc…(incase of engineering)
5) Now, one question…if Indian model was to learn by cramming or “rot”, why would MNC,s vie for Indian engineers so much. India being now called one of the R&D hub of the world is the testament of quality of Engineers developed in India
As far as China goes, why do you think that China is far beyond reach of any body in manufacturing. It is because of the style of education imaprted like Nick said correctly. Chinese are excellent at what they do but when it comes to generalized knowledge they are not at par. Being Jack of all is good in certain ways, as is the case of Indians.
The problem that Indians have again is in its culture:
1) They play it safe. They lack dynamism, however, it is changing fast. The amount of entrepreneurs coming up recently is again an example.
2) Indians sometimes are too theorotical, they do have knowledge, but whe it comes to practicality, they do lack quite a bit.
3) India has very very less number of Universities. India has 350 universities for a population of 1 billion. Compare that with US, where they have 3000 universities for 300 million people.
I hope that I get the message across.
Thank you Sheetal for publishing this post.
August 7th, 2007 at 11:54 am
Fuel the fire! Good to see that the blog does have some readers and commentators…..
Whilst the comments from Trak in are quite valid – I for one being an Indian and an engineer (from a top 50 ranked institute on the listing provided on trak.in) do believe that other than the creme da la creme the practical knowledge imparted to students is rather limited with the focus being on theoretical studies. What though makes us different is the culture where we are encouraged to think beyond whats been presented to us.
India with it’s limited number of universities does still churn out the largest number of engineers/annum – China is threatening to outpace us unless we can bring in sizeable investement into new institutions.
Will though add by no means is there a limitation of R&D facilities set up by corporations (domestic & mncs) within China! Important we downplay the hype and the hoopla of the independent and chaotic Indian Media. Might be a study in itself to actually compare R&D investements between Indian & China – and I for one being would not be surprised if the Chinese far outpace us!
August 11th, 2007 at 5:16 pm
speaking as someone who was born in HK but have lived in UK for most of my 25 years, China’s students are similar even to those of HK. Not sure what it’s like as a student in China, but education in HK is also about doing ‘tests’. Even at a early age, any time for independent thinking is simply suffocated by the sheer amount of homework one has to do. by the time one get to university, capacity and ability to think ‘out of the box’ has been stifled. Thus, all the way through education, one learns by simply how much they can memorise from textbooks.
i also totally agree with the statement that in general, when given the task, chinese people are efficient at completing it. but ask them to solve it without instructions, then problems arise
Overall, despite high number of graduates, china don’t produce those with the relevant skills to support technolgy and innovation. As always, China is still about quantity rather than quality. Investment is substantially than india but along that growth in china, there is massive wastage and inefficiency that one cannot comprehend.
August 14th, 2007 at 1:47 am
Indian engineering system is at presently far behind that of the United States, even if you consider IITs also. Even many institutes of Australia and Canada are providing a lot better education than that of the best in India. In India, the culture and the conditions are different, lot of population and a sick mentality of to become a “BADA AADMI” and not realising his/her own dreams. 95% indian engineers work only for money. The people who take engg in west are those who have a natural aptitude for that. But you can never say that indian engg education system is better. Its ROTTEN and most rotten part of it is the teachers who are teaching. Just cramming and nothing !
It needs to be improved!!
August 14th, 2007 at 2:03 am
The engineering studies in most colleges in India have several strong foundation science courses like mechanics,electrostatics and electrical sciences,advanced calculus and complex analysis,thermodynamics and probability-statistics,solid dynamics,etc. in the first two years of their four year course and then some specialized subjects along with industry-student projects and internships.
All these things give us a perfect blend of understanding and solving real time challenges.Colleges like BITS Pilani and Goa have proved this to the world and all other colleges need to incorporate asimilar programs if they want to be practically relevant.
August 15th, 2007 at 6:27 pm
Chris: Great post. I am reproducing it on my blog.
Thanks.
October 1st, 2007 at 10:57 am
Great post, I have been thinking the same thing for a long time. I am a computer engineer, and after seeing Chinese ‘engineers’ of the same field it became obvious they are only technicians.
They know how to do whats in the book, as soon as something comes up that hasn’t already been done, documented and learned, they simply can’t do it, they just don’t have any capacity to think outside the box or even combine separate unrelated solutions, because that particular combination hasn’t been specifically taught to them. I don’t think this will change while they have an insecure government which is scared sh!tless of another 1989 – they don’t want their people being able to think for themselves. This of course has to hold the country back as a source of cheap labor only which has obvious problems.
I have not met a single engineer in China and I’ve been here for 10 years, I’ve only met technicians who call themselves engineers.
I have no idea about India so can’t comment on that.