How Do Our Undergraduate Students Compare With The Best?

If you take the world's best universities, you will see that undergraduate students add to their academic strength. And they do so in two basic ways:

1. Classroom presence. Students in MIT, Caltech, Purdue, Princeton... are interested in their subjects, they are excited about what they want to do in life and know that a good university education will give them the necessary foundation. So they come to classes not just alert, but often after having read the relevant portions in their textbooks; they ask questions, they use every opportunity available to clear doubts; they do homeworks themselves because they know that's how they'll learn, they want to excel in projects and you'll see them busy in labs and workshops, trying to do something awesome that they can showcase.

And when these students graduate and join the workforce, they obviously deliver so well in their career that their country naturally leads in every field.

2. Adhering to extremely high ethical standards: To give one of my favorite examples, every student, staff and faculty member of Caltech takes a pledge that they shall not take unfair advantage of any other member of the Caltech community under any circumstance. And this is followed all the way: Many exams are take-home, yet no one cheats; everyone, including students, can check in and check out library books themselves, yet no one steals or damages books; dishonesty is considered shameful and it's actually a deep insult to be called unethical. And if anyone cheats, there are firm consequences.

So if you ever wonder why systems in the west work efficiently with everyone doing their job sincerely, the answer is that university life prepares people correctly. And this reflects in the society at large when university graduates take up different professions and responsibilities.

The situation is the opposite in even the best of Indian universities. Cheating is rampant in not just homeworks but even exams, even the best of professors have to often teach half empty classes because students just aren't motivated, campus discipline issues are severe with many hostels known to have supply chains of drugs, women, and whatever else money can buy, and professors and hostel wardens are often scared to take any disciplinary action because university administrators buckle under pressure. Many private universities have it a bit worse when it comes to discipline because they feel obliged to go easy on "high fees paying students" - but MIT, Caltech, Stanford and Cornell are private universities too, they charge high fees too 😄! Paying fees is not a ticket to recklessness 😄! One still has to abide by the rules of the university - just like having the money to buy a car does not mean you can ignore traffic rules 😄!

We need to turn this around if we want to be first world. University life and learning set the tone for life and work in society. If the former is on dodgy grounds, the latter cannot be steady, stable and first world. No chance.