Monday, February 26, 2007

china unbelievably ahead of india in education?

feb 26th, 2007

dr prathap is right in essence, although he may be exaggerating a little for rhetorical purposes. he was an IIT JEE #1 and then gold medalist at IIT Madras, and then a PhD from there. he is concerned about the quality of education in india for sure. also, he knows chinese capabilities up close and personal because he grew up in singapore.

it is true that the chinese are creating world-class universities by pouring money into them. it is possible to buy good universities: eg. texas created the wonderful UTA by throwing oil money at it.

the quality of research in india is appalling. this is a very fine legacy of the nehruvian state, where the only thing that matter is ass-kissing. great examples were given in shourie's 'eminent historians': a famous vice-chancellor stole someone's research and got his PhD based on that.

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Anil

http://www.indyvation.com/ShowContents.asp?ArticleID=67&rand=182068533

Indian media, politicians and even intellectuals are busy in self-congratulating themselves over their phenomenal economic progress in recent years. Chief scientist Gangan Prathap, who works at Centre for Mathematical Modelling and Computer Simulation in Bangalore, has estimated that India will take at least 163 years to match China's research workforce of 850,000 even if Beijing were to freeze the number today! Yes, 163 years to catchup with China and that too assuming that China will not do anything during all these years. India publishes less than two percent of research papers in the world, this is a shameful number for a nation of one billion people. It is the same old story of bureaucracy strangling research.

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