Engineering colleges are so bad even Hilter is pissed off that they’re copying his ideas. Krish Ashok managed to score an exclusive: Concentration Camps
I’m blaming AU because they’re the bloody idiots supposed to be in charge of setting the syllabus and pretty much everything about the engineering course and all they do is sit on their asses and collect re-evaluation money.
Quote from Infosys Service Agreement:
AND WHEREAS The Engineer recognizes and accepts that at the time of appointment as Software Engineer, except exposure to academic knowledge, he/she has received no formal, effective, technical or practical training enabling him/her to independently function as a Software Engineer thereby becoming commercially viable to the Company.
Isn’t this what I’ve been saying all along? Read it and weep.
George wrote about the Bachelor of Engineering course under Anna University and the less fortunate who are burdened with it. Read it here and then come back to this post.
First off he talked about organised protests. We had that a few times. It was nice. Two years ago our seniors were annoyed with the poor placements we had and decided to go on strike. So we went downstairs and assembled before the department block. The Principal and the HOD came and mollified the seniors after a few hours after promising to do whatever they wanted. So what happened after that? None of their demands were met and the people who acted as spokespersons for the strike had their internal marks reduced that semester.
Last year, the Mechanical department didn’t have a lot of the machinery/equipment required for the course and even though the students asked for it many times there was no progress. So those chaps enlisted their juniors and went on strike. The previous strikes had been so ineffective that they decided to force the management to listen to what they needed. They assembled near the gate and blocked the buses from leaving the college in the evening. Some of the people from the management arrived and after some heated arguments, the students were told that all that they wanted would be taken care of and finally they dispersed. The result of this strike? About six of the people who were made themselves heard during the strike were expelled the next day. Needless to say none of their demands were met.
So every time we ask for something we are ignored or sent away with false promises. We cannot escalate the matter further for fear of getting expelled or internals reduced or answer papers sabotaged.
Now what do you want us to do? There are no student unions (they are not allowed/encouraged in engineering colleges). There is nowhere else to air our grievances. In typical Indian fashion, parents want their kids to bear whatever is thrown at them ‘for the sake of their future’.
The next part of the post deals with people joining engineering and complaining about it. What George has conveniently ignored is that people are not complaining that they took the wrong course. They are complaining that the course is so poorly designed and out of date. They are complaining that colleges are bureaucratic, implement ridiculous archaic rules and treat students like shit. Hence, they wish that they had done some other course.
Later, George says:
With such draconian parents, people unwilling to accept that their children must be latent geniuses at something other than engineering, these people must be having a hard time going home and handing in their semester mark sheets showing a few miscellaneous arrears. Strangely, they don’t.
Wrong. For example, one of my classmate who was playing CS with us every day was forced to stop using the computer after he flunked a subject.
They also don’t have any trouble bunking the occasional class, waking up at 2 in the afternoon, playing video games all the time or watching TV for long periods of time.
That’s just me! I don’t let my parents scare me. It doesn’t happen everywhere.
George only has limited facts and second hand information at his disposal. Plus his views are skewed because he studies in an arts college which has existed for decades where things work differently. You have to study in a mediocre engineering college to know how it really is. The frustration with the unqualified staff that make you run around just to assert their control over you, the randomness in scoring in the exams, the stupid rules, the unbearably dull classes…
If you don’t understand the title, see AYBABTU.
My classmate Arun (Yeah it’s another Arun… hard to keep track of them all isn’t it? We call this one ‘Poochi’.) bought a new ‘iPhone’ and he said it was a great deal since it was cheap and sound quality was great. These cheap phones from Korea and China have invaded the market and they are really awesome. I’ll explain.
Gokul (another classmate) bought one for about Rs. 4000 and this touchscreen phone has dual cameras, a large screen, a great loudspeaker and the other usual stuff. The feature I liked most was the ability to use two SIM cards and switch between them from within the phone interface. Gokul tells me that you can set it up to receive calls from both numbers! The one Alayan bought has a TV receiver! There’s even a watch phone!
Now why are other cell phone manufacturers still selling their stuff for obscene prices? They don’t even have a dual SIM feature in any of their models! These phones come with no warranty (though vendors say more and more shops are selling them and hence eventually we’ll be able to repair them) and the poorly designed (though colourful) interface uses Times New Roman it is still a great deal at these prices. Plus if you lose it you can always buy another cause they’re so cheap.
If you don’t understand the title you’re not L337 enough.
The fact that the engineering course is in much demand makes colleges treat students like shit. They conveniently forget that we are the customers paying them money. Here’s an example of how ridiculous things are when trying to access the Internet at college.
Me – Marc
LA – Lab Assistant
HOD – Head of the CSE Department
L – Lecturer
…
1st Year
Me: Hey, do you have Internet access here?
L: Yes, in the CSE block.
(In the first year we were put in the EEE block and then the ECE block.)
Me: So can I go there?
L: No.
Me: Why not?
L: You have classes. Go in the lunch break.
Me: When do I eat lunch then?
L: Don’t act smart.
2nd Year
Me: Hey I’d like to access the Internet.
LA: Did you ask the HOD?
Me: M’am, I need to access the Internet.
HOD: Why?
Me: To look up some stuff.
HOD: Did you pass all your monthly tests?
Me: No.
HOD: First you concentrate on your studies.
3rd Year
Me: I need to access the Internet.
LA: Internet connection is down. BSNL guys will come to fix it.
Me: BSNL?! So you mean no Internet for the rest of this year?
LA: Don’t worry. We called them up. They will come in a few days.
Later…
Me: I want to use the Internet.
LA: You must use it only for college related work.
Me: Fine. Wait… why is Gmail blocked?! Orkut and Yahoo Mail, understandable…
LA: You should do only college related work. Students are looking at forwards.
Me: Right, I’ll just use a proxy.
4th Year
Me: I’m going to use the Internet.
LA: All labs are full. Lab classes are going on.
…
The sad part is that every student pays for Internet access in the annual tuition fee. Even when we do have some computers available in the lab and time to use the Internet, everyone immediately loads up Orkut or email forwards with hundreds of pictures choking up the 1 Mbps connection completely. Some bastards even stream videos and put on song downloads while I sit there waiting for Gmail to load.
Oh wow, the second and last day of college for this week is over. I look forward to another five days of peace. Ah…!
College is tiring and is even more so now that they’ve changed my bus route to go via Kovalam. That means another 20 minutes on the bus before I get home. (That’s one hour and ten minutes total.) Tiring.
What is surprising is how tired I get even though all we did in college was sit around and talk, ignoring the lecturers who tried taking classes.
Arun and Harikumar alerted me to a Times Now news item about engineering colleges in and around Chennai passing off their bullshit rules as Tamil culture.
Regressive separation of the sexes?
In 21st century India, if you thought we had done away with archaic ideas about men and women, thing again. TIMES NOW has found that certain colleges in Chennai have forced male and female students to keep out of each other’s way, so much so that students cannot even walk on the same roads. This is all ostensibly in the name of Tamil culture.The outskirts of Chennai are home to scores of engineering colleges where discipline it appears is an obsession – sometimes even bordering on the ridiculous. Some rules even bar students from talking to the opposite sex.
Read the entire article here and click ‘Play Video’ at the bottom of the page to see the news item.
This is what we have to put up with. The colleges mentioned in the video are the extreme cases of course but this is the management’s approach in most engineering colleges. Now who’s at fault? It’s the bloody parents who support their ridiculous rules. Now how can students revolt when their own parents won’t support them?
Also, why does the news article claim that this happens only in deemed universities. What about the hundreds of colleges under Anna University that have banned cell phones on campus simply because of some misguided fellow?
I have to college tomorrow and it sucks so much! Usually we’d have 5 days off before we had to endure it again but this time the second project review and monthly tests wiped out most of the week and got only Friday and Sunday off.
The worst part about college is getting up in the morning at sunrise. Then we spend eight hours doing nothing and then get back home by sunset, too tired to do anything else. What a meaningless existence.
Now don’t tell me that I’ll miss college when I am out, enjoy it while it lasts and bullshit like that. What do you know about me or my college? I will always hate it. Just like I hate St. John’s, that piece of shit school I once studied at. I hold grudges for a very long time and I don’t forget.
I’m so tired. Monthly tests have started and this means we have to go to college on Wednesday. And since everyone did the first test so badly they’ve asked us to write the test again on Thursday. The second project review is on Thursday and Friday. All this means that pretty much the whole week is lost going to college. What a waste of time. I want to go back to not getting up at ungodly hours in the morning before the sun rises and being relaxed.
What a horrible life.
The Campus Connect program started by Infosys is a n effort to bring the students in engineering colleges up to industry standards to make them more employable.
While the initiative is commendable, it looks like the program isn’t working as intended. Read more about it here.
Are engineering colleges corrupting this program or is Infosys dumbing down everything to reach the students?
Even if the latter is true, there is absolutely no excuse for misspelling the page title on this page.
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