Sunday, February 12, 2006

Higher Education

According to the SF Chronicle, Men are slowly becoming a minority in US colleges. The only courses bucking the trend are Engineering and Computer Science related. link.

This is quite different from colleges in India, where all courses are still dominated by men. However there is a curious trend, especially in South India. Amongst the Middle Class and Upper Middle class in South India there is a strong preference towards either Engineering or Medicine.

A number of my friends chose engineering more out of peer and parental pressure rather than any real interest. The result? Most of them have moved out the field and into fields that they are more interested in.

The question to ask is, why is there so much pressure to do engineering? The answer is simple - Engineers and Doctors are perceived to have higher incomes. Within the different fields of engineering too there is higher preference to Computer Science and Electronics - again due to the perception that these fields have higher incomes.

Lesser importance is given to personal interests.

Myopic View of

No comments: