An alternative education system
It’s time to rethink our traditional approach to education
Our current engineering education system has some flaws which need to be addressed.
Let me briefly run you through the pros and cons of our current education system.
Good things
- Helps students to grow socially
- Forces us to study things which if given a choice we will never study and sometimes they turn out to be good
Bad things
- No exposure to the actual industry, very few people can start working on live projects without a good training program
- More focus on theoretical knowledge and less on practical knowledge
- Waste of time studying useless subjects (More precisely non optimal use of time. I liked maths, studied it for four semesters but none of that knowledge was used while working as a programmer)
- People are forced to study subjects which they don’t like
- Very few teachers actually want to teach (I’m talking about India)
- The cost, which is increasing with every passing day
Now I don’t think the pros weigh more than the cons, then why are we still sticking with the current education system. Is the certificate that we get at the end of four years worth it? Majority of the people who graduate from my class didn’t have any clue about their future job role. And if you don’t have that exposure then how will you decide which job role suits you the best. I read this somewhere in a meme
In India everyone first becomes an engineer and then decides what he wants to do in life
It’s funny but the sad part is that it’s true. So how do we fix that?
The awesome college
Now imagine a college where you learn by building things. It’s not a college, but it’s more like an IT startup. Lets start with only the software sector because that’s what I’m good at. You start working on small client projects. You start learning things required to finish that project. It can be a programming language, hardware knowledge, designing, user experience, communication skills or rocket science. This gives you the exposure about how software world functions and where you can fit in. After that you can dig deeper into what suits or attracts you the most. Slowly you start learning more by working on bigger projects. At any point of time you can change what you want to learn. Also you can choose to work on your own product or start your own startup. The company/college will be self sustaining. You don’t need to pay any tuition fees and you might get paid some stipend if you are doing a good job.
The teachers
Obviously there will be teachers who are experts in their respective domains. Their job role is to work on live projects as well as teach. People who can give you the best advise related to their field of expertise. The best part about the teachers will be that they are teaching because they want to teach and not because they couldn't get a different job (I don’t want to insult teachers here. There were very few good teachers in my life who helped me become what I’m today, I wish there were many). As the teachers will be working on live projects, the disconnect between what you are learning and what is happening in the industry will vanish.
The company
Now lets take a look at the company part of this project. The company will focus more on quality than quantity. We won’t be selling low quality software at cheap price instead we will sell quality software at premium price. Students and teachers will work together to build software products. The employees will be domain experts and at the same time people who love to teach. The students will be offered a full time job in the company on completion of their four years. The main focus will be on cumulative growth instead of profit.
Helping the underprivileged
One objective of this company/college will be to help students who can’t afford higher education. I got financial help from many people while I was completing my engineering, without that I would have never done computer engineering. Now I don’t think that everyone gets this kind of help. This college will provide you quality education at zero price. Hopefully when it grows, it will be able to provide you other facilities too.
Financial model
The company/college will make money like any other IT company, that is by building software. The full time employees will spend half of their time building great software. At the same time the students will spend good amount of time working on live projects. This way the students pay for their education while learning new things at the same time. We don’t want to take donations. If someone really wants to help, they can give guest lectures, give us software projects to work on or invest in the company/college. This way it won’t become a charitable organisation.
The final objective
The final objective of this project is to create a better education system. To build a renowned university where people learn by doing. Where creativity is valued as much as intelligence and to assess people based on their actual work and not theoretical knowledge.
I would like to hear any suggestions and ideas. This is not the final plan of action, I’m still figuring out stuff. Also let me know if you would like to be a part of this initiative.
