Curious Cat Science and Engineering Blog » Engineering Education: Can India overtake China?

June 14, 2006

Engineering Education: Can India overtake China?

Engineering education: Can India overtake China? by George Iype, Rediff:

India currently has 113 universities and 2,088 colleges, many of which teach various engineering disciplines. Engineering colleges in the country have been growing at 20 per cent a year, while business schools have grown at 60 per cent.
…
According to a McKinsey Global Institute study on the emerging global labour market, India produces a large number of engineering graduates every year, but multinationals find that just 25 per cent of them are employable. ‘In India, the overall quality of the educational system, apart from the top universities, could improve significantly,’ the report said.

Once again they quote the 600,000; 400,000 and 70,000 figures which the Duke University study shows is misleading. Still the short article provides some interesting information. Also the comment section shows the Duke study is beginning to seep into the public consciousness.

Examining the best numbers we can get (and trying to get better numbers to use for analysis) is a good idea. Still, we should not ignore the importance of the large macro trend. China and India are producing a significantly increasing proportion of the world’s engineers. Duke’s study indicate the comparison numbers are exaggerated, but the underlying trend is still strong and real.

I think the increase in China’s and India’s engineers will be a good thing for the world. And I think the both countries will continue to increase the numbers of engineers that are equal in skill and ability to others internationally (I can imagine today a higher percentage of USA engineers are highly skilled but that will not necessarily be true 30 years from now - it depends on the actions taken by many people, in government, academia and industry).

The continuation of the trend is not guaranteed; it will largely depend on the the continued economic success of India and China. If it continues it will also require some adjustments by engineers everywhere, which is one reason getting better data is wise.

by curiouscat Tags: Career, Economics, Engineering, Universities
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3 Responses to “Engineering Education: Can India overtake China?”

Curious Cat Management Improvement Blog » Blog Archive » Manufacturing is Cool Says:
June 17th, 2006 at 3:53 pm
[...] Posts from the Curious Cat Science and Engineering Blog on engineering careers, items of interest to science and engineering students and science and engineering economic impact by curiouscat Tags: Manufacturing, Education, Career Permalink to: Manufacturing is Cool [...]
Curious Cat Science and Engineering Blog » The World’s Best Research Universities Says:
August 19th, 2006 at 9:44 am
[...] Engineering Education: Can India overtake China? [...]
eric ember Says:
May 23rd, 2008 at 3:44 pm
I think India will overtake china simply because India has right to intellectual property and is moving into a capitalist economy rather quickly. People tend to thrive better in this environment and do better in their work

China is a communist nation. No right to intellectual property. Take for example the inventor of the video game tetris. It make hundreds of millions of dollars, but since the inventor was in communist Russia he did not get a piece of the tetris pie.

India is hungry and becoming very comfortable with technology very quickly and they have opportunity to help fuel the push