This post will give you a small insight to why the Indian education system is utter garbage, followed by my experiences with this godforsaken assemblage of marks and money. As it is right now, it's an archaic factory pumping out millions of "engineers" who have memorization powers unlike never seen before. 

Why am I ranting? Because I like to. I've ranted time and again to friends of mine, knowing perfectly well that I'm better off trying to conjure my very own Patronus (which is a hedgehog by the way). I know that I cannot possibly change the rusty minds of our 'humble teachers', so I've stopped trying entirely. Now I'm ranting online. Great. 

I'm studying Computer Science at a Tier 3 (the lowest tier) university at the far south edge of India. Couldn't do anything about this due to circumstances I do not wish to explain here. Anyway, I chose CS because I love it. I love how you can tell precisely tell what you want your computer to do with mere lines of code. I love the sound the keyboard makes when you type.

This isn't the case for the majority of the students in my classroom though. I guarantee you, if you walk up to a student and ask him why he chose this major, he'd reply,

Here's the first problem. The parents. Yes, I get it. You want a good life for your kid. You want him to get "settled". You don't want him to face what you faced. But what do you mean by "settled"?  Does it mean you control what your child does and force him to repeat the vicious cycle of study, marry, have kids and retire? This way of living has become commonplace here in India. Does it mean you don't want him to live his dream life?

I once asked a classmate, why he chose CS, when he obviously didn't belong here. With a fierce glint in his eyes, he replied, 

One reason why the system isn't working is that the parents are forcing their decrepit ideologies into the minds of their children. I'm eagerly anticipating the next generation of parents who will hopefully allow their kids to study what they want. I'm grateful to this day to my parents for giving me the freedom to choose what I want.

Actual proof that the system isn't working.

As it is right now, the system is more about getting enough marks rather than actually understanding a subject. Students fret over these superficial marks more so than the knowledge they'd be able to gain. It is universally known that knowledge = power. Marks don't mean shit.

I got hold of a database containing academic details of fellow students. With this, I could see how everyone's GPA progressed over the semesters. As shown below, the graph below exhibits a steady increase. This is not normal. It can one of two things: either the students are actually learning (which I assure you, isn't the case), or the students figured out a way to play the system.

Why the steady incline?

Logically, this increase in GPA progression over the semesters can be explained by the following reasons:

• subjects getting easier
• teachers slacking off
• teachers awarding free marks
• students 'playing the system'

Subjects getting easier: While the first two semesters barely had any CS subjects, progression of subjects slowly went from basic programming paradigms to complex concepts like page replacement algorithms in operating systems to lexical analyzers in compiler design. In no way did the subjects get easier. This is expected, as a well structured study program would ramp up in difficulty as you move on to more complex subjects. I pity the one who created the syllabus. If he'd see how far the college has fallen in implementing it, he'd surely shed a tear or two. Surely. The subjects never got easier, it's just that pedagogy went to shit.

Teachers slacking off: I've only seen one teacher who was actually good in teaching and was passionate about it. The rest taught the subjects half-heartedly and corrected papers just for the sake of it. The fact that the majority of the people don't think that this is a big problem still baffles me to this day. I once had a teacher correct my exam paper in a mere 10 seconds. Yes, 10 seconds. And he did it right in front of me. I even got awarded marks for a wrong answer I wrote. So there's that. The way they blatantly display their unconcerned smirks in front of hundreds of students is honestly sickening.

Teachers awarding free marks: Teachers award extra marks just so the student can pass a paper. What does this lead to? A batch of mediocre students just managing to coast along by short-term rote memorization. Great.

Students playing the system: I think it's safe to say that the majority of education systems in the world are 'playable', the one in India even more so. You figure out how it works, and you trick the system into thinking you actually know what you're doing, but in reality you're just pushing the right buttons.

I also played the system. When you have unmotivated teachers, a lack of resources, lack of mentorship and a mediocre college, the motivation to actually study is non-existent. I 'studied' on the last day for each of my exams and managed to get a 9.1 GPA. Don't ask me why I never actually studied the subjects. I had no reason to.

A story of broken dreams

While joining, I had high hopes. I wanted to make the best use of the resources given to me. But reality hit. And it hit hard. The university wasn't going to help me. It had no resources to give.

I had come from a syllabus which required you to truly understand the subjects you're studying and was thrown into a system where rote memorization and simple pencil diagrams were commonplace and a surefire way to fetch you marks. The assignments I wrote by myself would get the same marks as the 40 others who plagiarized it from a single guy who was gracious enough to share it on the WhatsApp group. Sometimes this gracious guy was me.

Practical subjects are only given a credit value of 1 while theory subjects were given a value of 3. You'd have people who knew nothing about algorithms get an A grade on the theory paper while the same person couldn't get a simple bubble sort algorithm to compile without errors. People who did not know how to run MySQL from the Linux terminal ended up passing exams which required you connect databases to a PHP website. Executing your code succesfully amounts to a mere 15% of your entire grade. Writing the code by hand on paper gains you 50% of the marks. And it isn't even checked to see if it's correct. All the invigilators want is a piece of paper filled with syntax errors. Why did I even bother putting that extra semicolon?

I am one of the few in my class who would compile everything without errors. The rest couldn't even manage to compile a program succesfully, yet 90% of them would pass. How is this is any way fair to the people who are actually interested and put an effort to study? It's like the people who do a task correctly and people who don't attempt it both get the same rewards. Put yourself in this situation and you can realize how frustrating it gets after a while.

Pretty soon I realized what an absolute mess this system is, and I was better off forging my own path.

Anyway. I'm ending this short. I want to write more but thinking about the time and money wasted just makes everything feel so drab. Here's a nice tweet to end it on a positive note:

How to fix this?

My attention-span has been depleted, therefore I'll just paste an excerpt from my Quora answer here:

From the stars,
FR.