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.
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Is that also true for India's newly minted engineers?
The quality is so variable between the universities in India that [companies] can't rely upon it, so they basically have to bring everybody up to the same level.
Do you see anything parallel in the United States?
No. In the U.S., if you go back to the 1950s and the 1960s, when you joined IBM, you'd get seven months of training, and then they'd put you through a year's worth of job rotation. If a new recruit joins IBM today, they probably get three days of orientation and then they're on the job, expected to hit the ground running.
Does the U.S. have such a poor education system that we need to retrain workers, just like in India?
We don't need it because of the educational system, we need it for the existing workforce. There is no problem with the output of our universities; it's excellent. There's no problem with them joining new companies, ready to work. What's happened here is that globalization has disrupted the existing workforce. Globalization is now shifting critical R&D jobs overseas. It's hitting entire professions—for example, the software profession. Right now entry-level software workers are at a disadvantage in the U.S. because the same job can be done more cheaply in India.
But why retrain U.S. workers at all if it's less expensive to do it in India?
The point I'm making is that we need to come up with a comprehensive strategy to [deal with] globalization. The mantra right now is that we need to fix K-12 and we need to teach more math and science and everything will be OK. I'm saying by all means improve education … but the way you're going to compete globally is with the existing workforce—the people already out there, working for companies. Invest in training them. Learn from the way the Indians are doing it. The U.S. needs to adapt the same tactic here. Rather than closing the door on immigrants or constructing trade barriers—which will make us more like Cuba—we need to open up. But we need to adapt and invest in our existing workforce.
Is this something that will be cost-effective for companies to do? Will the government need to take the ball here?
This has to be a nationwide initiative. We need to come up with a policy that encourages companies to invest in their people. It can be tax breaks, it can be mandates. Just like with maternity leave … why not get training leave? We should basically make companies allow employees to take paid time off to improve their skills. And then we should have our community-college system and our universities provide the training.
Telling Americans they need to learn from India might not sit right—the U.S. doesn't have a good reputation for admiring the policies of others. As globalization continues, is that mentality going to have to change?
It will have to change. We have to hammer into the country the idea that the world has changed. The U.S. lead can't be taken for granted anymore. We could go the way of the British Empire. We have to take a hard look at ourselves and be proactive.
© 2008
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