Q&A: American Companies Can Learn From India | Newsweek Education

Engineering Success

An entrepreneur turned academic argues that to compete globally, American institutions should act more like Indian ones.

By Barrett Sheridan | Newsweek Web Exclusive

Aug 12, 2008 | Updated: 6:53 p.m. ET Aug 12, 2008

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Vivek Wadhwa has a controversial message for Americans worried about outsourcing and losing their jobs. His advice: learn from India. An entrepreneur and successful businessman who's started two software companies, Wadhwa has spent the last three years as executive in residence at Duke University's engineering school, where he studies globalization and how America can compete in the face of low-cost labor in India, China and elsewhere. He spoke with NEWSWEEK's Barrett Sheridan about why he thinks India, which produces high-quality researchers despite low-quality schools, could be a model for the U.S. Excerpts:

NEWSWEEK: Your research looked at a much-cited statistic that says China and India combined graduate 10 times as many engineers as the U.S. each year. So let me ask: Should we be scared? Do those numbers mean America is losing its competitive edge?
The U.S. has many things to worry about, but the graduation rate of engineers is not one of them. Why? China's numbers are very large, but the quality is so poor that the vast majority are unemployable. They also classify a weird set of degrees as engineering; an auto mechanic could be called an engineer.

So what are the true numbers?
The [reported] numbers in China are about 500,000 versus about 150,000 in the U.S.A. India is under 250,000. But the trouble is these numbers are deceptive. I would discount the Chinese numbers by a factor of two or three to get to get rid of all the garbage. That would reduce China to about 200,000 real engineers. And only half of [graduating] Indian engineers are employable. Only now are you comparing apples to apples.

Despite the quality problem, the Indian economy is doing quite well, even branching out into sophisticated technological research and development. How are they doing that?
Just like private industry learned to adapt to India's weak infrastructure, they've learned to adapt to India's weak education system. Companies have developed the ability to train people from scratch, with leading companies able to train tens of thousands of people at a time and bring them up to world standards.

What kind of skills do they leave with?
Research and development in a whole variety of high-tech industries. Pharmaceuticals, aerospace, semiconductors, software, networking.

So someone with a weak formal education could become a lab researcher discovering new drugs?
Yes, exactly. You don't have to be a hotshot Ph.D. [The companies will] train them. Infosys has a new training institute that can train 13,500 people at a time. Engineering graduates get four months of mandatory boot-camp-like training, which means six days a week, 10 to 12 hours a day. And if you're a science graduate or an arts graduate, you get seven months of training.

Posted By: chongyeeyap @ 08/17/2008 8:29:31 PM

I believe that Vivek (author) is right for Americans to learn from Indians because the USA has become a nation of "layabouts"; you have been living off the fat of our 3rd world and like our Malays in Malaysia you expect to be fed without working for it. Anyways, it is interesting to take notice the garbage that is trundelled out as arguements by Vivek. The most obvious example is his claim that China graduates 500,000 engineers per year of which he discounts by a factor of 3 the employable engineers. Having said that we are to assume by his claim that 350,000 Chinese trained engineers do not have the skills to function in their profession. There you have it in a nutshell, the Indian punchant for putting down whatever is about China, and so too the west. THIS IS WISHFUL THINKING CRAP ! You just want to say that the air quality in Beijing is not fit for athletics, RIGHT ?

We Chinese unlike the Indians and the west do not think that all problems has a positive solution so we live with our problems creatively. The problem that Vivek seeks to claim that he knows, is a problem that was created by the west and it is one of those unsolvable problem THE TRUTH IS ONE CAN'T SELL THE SAME PRODUCT FOR FAR MORE THAN OUR COMPETITOR CAN SELL THEM. The west paid themselves for more than was neccessarily required, therefore they cannot reduce their costs for fear of social upheavel. We reclaimed our pre-eminence in the geo-political sphere of human competition; China had been the centre of world science & technology, for more than 5,000 years and we are back. We had been there before and we are now again the leaders of this area of human competition. I always thought that China had been graduating 375,000 engineers per year, but good for China that we produce 500,000 engineers. How is it that Vivek doubts that China graduates 500,000 engineers ? Did he going into research (a favourite turn of pharase) on the unemployment of Chinese engineers ? How does he come up with a factor of 3 for China and a factor of 2 for India and nothing for the USA ? Do these claims mean that American engineers are better trained and everyone of them are sufficiently suitable to function in their profession ?

If you Indians & the USA are wishful enough to think as you would like to think of China look at what our Ch9nese have achieved within a span of 7 years to provide a purpose built sports venue and ask yourself, if India or the USA is chosen to host an Olympics, can you achieve the same result ?

JUST DO NOT CRAP MINDLESSLY ! You can say that of India but not of China.

Member Comments

Posted By: chongyeeyap @ 08/17/2008 8:29:31 PM

I believe that Vivek (author) is right for Americans to learn from Indians because the USA has become a nation of "layabouts"; you have been living off the fat of our 3rd world and like our Malays in Malaysia you expect to be fed without working for it. Anyways, it is interesting to take notice the garbage that is trundelled out as arguements by Vivek. The most obvious example is his claim that China graduates 500,000 engineers per year of which he discounts by a factor of 3 the employable engineers. Having said that we are to assume by his claim that 350,000 Chinese trained engineers do not have the skills to function in their profession. There you have it in a nutshell, the Indian punchant for putting down whatever is about China, and so too the west. THIS IS WISHFUL THINKING CRAP ! You just want to say that the air quality in Beijing is not fit for athletics, RIGHT ?

We Chinese unlike the Indians and the west do not think that all problems has a positive solution so we live with our problems creatively. The problem that Vivek seeks to claim that he knows, is a problem that was created by the west and it is one of those unsolvable problem THE TRUTH IS ONE CAN'T SELL THE SAME PRODUCT FOR FAR MORE THAN OUR COMPETITOR CAN SELL THEM. The west paid themselves for more than was neccessarily required, therefore they cannot reduce their costs for fear of social upheavel. We reclaimed our pre-eminence in the geo-political sphere of human competition; China had been the centre of world science & technology, for more than 5,000 years and we are back. We had been there before and we are now again the leaders of this area of human competition. I always thought that China had been graduating 375,000 engineers per year, but good for China that we produce 500,000 engineers. How is it that Vivek doubts that China graduates 500,000 engineers ? Did he going into research (a favourite turn of pharase) on the unemployment of Chinese engineers ? How does he come up with a factor of 3 for China and a factor of 2 for India and nothing for the USA ? Do these claims mean that American engineers are better trained and everyone of them are sufficiently suitable to function in their profession ?

If you Indians & the USA are wishful enough to think as you would like to think of China look at what our Ch9nese have achieved within a span of 7 years to provide a purpose built sports venue and ask yourself, if India or the USA is chosen to host an Olympics, can you achieve the same result ?

JUST DO NOT CRAP MINDLESSLY ! You can say that of India but not of China.
Posted By: lilstogi11 @ 08/15/2008 5:03:02 PM

the US is ***. India will take over China. Just watch. (Insert Sarcasm)
Posted By: Tea6 @ 08/15/2008 11:46:55 AM

The US has always been a high wage, high automation nation. This is how we became prosperous. The only other time we got rich on cheap labor was during the years of slavery. The American people will not put up with a situation where US labor is devalued by outsourcing, offshoring and use of illegal immigration.