Progression of an engineering student in a typical college

Yesterday, one Mr. Angad Daryani, CEO of a startup, Praan Inc, tweeted about an IIT Kanpur graduate whose CV, should we say, had a few things which he hadn't done. He has since deleted the tweet (or post on X, but old timers like me still call it twitter) saying that the tweet resulted in IIT bashing which wasn't the intention. The intention was to point out lack of ethics in some people only.

I replied to that that this lack of ethics is very common in Indian academia and not limited to IITs. This also had a lot of reactions and I started thinking about why does this happen.

The life of a typical student interested in engineering changes as s/he enters class 11th (sometimes even in class 9th, and in rare cases, even earlier). They have to go through JEE coaching, a lot of hard work, typically, more than 12 hours a day, every day, for two years. No one can do this kind of hard work unless the fruits are really sweet. So they are told by everyone in the society, including parents, teachers, neighbors, and relatives, "You only have to do hard work these two years, and your life will be made."

The clear implication is that college life is cool. At least that is how most students understand this. And students fall for this. A majority of them work extremely hard with the goal of getting into a top college.

Two years later, most of them will get a shock. Only one percent of our 17-18 year olds will get into top colleges. Others will have to think of second and third options. But whatever it is, whether IITs or a local engineering college, the expectation is the same that College Life is Cool. After all, all the elders cannot be wrong.

Students who go to top colleges realize very soon that they have been lied to. Most of them will adjust to new reality, some won't and will pay a price in future. But students who go to next tier colleges have a slightly different journey.

Students join a college thinking they don't have to study. But the other thing that has happened is that they had a goal for the last 2 (or 4) years and they were working much harder than what they would have done earlier. Now, whether they achieved that goal or not is not so meaningful, but it is extremely difficult to live a goalless life after working so hard for a goal for 2 years. (In that sense, entrance exams do affect the mental health of a large number of students who do not get admission to top colleges.) In our times, we could explore the college for a couple of semesters before thinking what we want to do with our lives. But not today. They need to have another goal quickly. How do they decide the next goal.

The other change that is happening at that time is adjustment to the college life. Experts have pointed out that the transition from school to college is a very stressful period for most students across the world.

So, we have three things happening. One, the expectation that the college life will be cool. Two, the stress of a transition period. Three, anxiety to set up the next goal. Whom does the first year student go to for clarity? No, not the faculty members who have seen such students in thousands, not the professional counselors of the university, not the career services office. They go to 2nd year students since they were in the same position most recently and therefore are most likely to understand their situation.

But, the second year students have no experience. They don't know what opportunities the world will have. They don't know what is needed for grabbing those opportunities. They haven't sat for a single interview for an internship. But do they say, they don't know. Of course, not. No one ever admits to not knowing something. So a confident answer is given. Your next goal should be a job. And you need two things for the job: Good grades and good soft skills.

So far, so good. No major problem with the advice. Yes, I would tell the students to do more thinking, talk to more people over the next one year, don't drop the alternatives like higher education, entrepreneurship, etc. But still, quite ok till now.

The next advice is where everything goes wrong. They are told that good grades are easy. You can just copy everything. There is no need to learn. You can prepare for campus interviews in a month in the third year. Till then, enjoy campus life. Of course, soft skills are harder to imbibe, and hence the freshers are advised to join multiple clubs, and do a whole lot of extra-curriculars.

Notice that this advice is completely consistent with what they had heard from their parents, their teachers, and everyone else. And they follow it diligently. In JKLU, where we have strong rules against copying and we have failed student for first time copying, dropped a semester for second time copying and terminated a student for third time copying, the parents will not just seek pardon for their wards, some of them will argue how we can be so different from other colleges.

In most colleges, faculty will not check for copying and really don't care for student success. So not copying can mean that those cheating can get better grades. That demoralizes a few who are still thinking of doing projects ethically. They don't realize that their career will depend more on learning and not so much on grades. At that age, grades seem like the only goal to care for. (And the society has contributed to that obsession.)

It is only in third year that they start applying for a serious internship and this is when they get a shock of their life. They fail interview after interview. Some students are smart. They realize the mistake they made in the first two years. Now, start learning and get ahead. But a lot of students are stuck. And they will either get no jobs or at best get the 3.5 to 4 lakh job in software services where the company is only looking for students who can learn (and not for students who already know something), and then have a 3-4 months training for them.

How do we solve this problem. We do a few things. First, in all our communication during the induction program, it is repeated several times that we want students to do assignments themselves, that we provide additional support in terms of student TAs, faculty office hours, and strongly encourage all first year students to take advantage of such additional resources. We also provide them a curated list of free online resources for each course, including Coursera (which we provide free to all of them). We also tell them that copying can lead to serious consequences and give examples from the past. We also try to create situations where the first year students have occasions to meet the 3rd year and 4th year students. They can certainly get better advice from senior students compared to 2nd year students.

 

Note: This journey is based on my travel to more than 100 engineering colleges and talking to several thousand students. I have not been traveling so much for the last 5-6 years. I am assuming that contours of the problem haven't changed much.