Is Studying for an Engineering Degree the Most Wasteful thing in Life?
School + Engineering Degree has almost become default near my place. I guess it’s the same across many places in India.
I am not talking about the job one may/may not get after studying B.E./B.Tech. I am talking about the 4 years of time spent while studying for the ‘Professional’ Degree. And of course, the HUGE Expenditure that is usually borne by fathers or banks.
Don’t you think 4 YEARS of YOUR TIME and LAKHS of YOUR MONEY is precious? Why waste it by enrolling in an engineering college?
A fraction of the students who enroll for engineering courses get good (read: moderately well paying) jobs and that might justify their investment (even then not the time). What about all those students who never got a job or never got a job in the field of their study?
Why are Indian parents encouraging this nonsense?
I wonder how many students… Forget that. I wonder how many professors understand what they teach!! If, in the name of engineering, you encourage students to blindly mug-up/memorize and pass with ‘flying colors’, all you achieve is increase their memory power. With cheap high capacity electronic storage devices available nowadays, even that is a waste.
Ever noticed the enormous number of gigantic engineering colleges that have sprung up across the country? Some are as big as towns! Do we really need so many engineers? Don’t you think it’s a colossal waste of infrastructure, money, and brains?
Maybe I am missing something. Maybe there is another side to this.
Perhaps the engineering colleges are employing people and providing jobs? Perhaps they are enabling construction, educational material, books, paper, xerox and other industries to prosper? Perhaps the engineering colleges impart the much required ‘discipline’ into students that can later be taken advantage of by the IT companies? Perhaps the engineering colleges help in ‘rotating money’ which might have otherwise been held back as black money or in Swiss accounts?
If these are the reasons for the existence of engineering colleges, by a similar logic, we can also justify the existence of liquor shops.
The same people who cry their hearts out after losing money to finance scams, emu scams, solar scams, etc. are proud of losing money to the engineering degree scam. I wonder by what logic anyone (except a small fraction) can justify their investment in engineering colleges?
Destination Infinity
PS: Written by an ‘Engineer’ who never did anything related to his ‘Engineering’ Degree.
PS2: I challenge all engineers (well, almost all of you reading this post) to declare that the four years spent in an engineering college were very productive and useful for your future career. Let’s see how many can do that.
