One of the best articles I have read on the why and how of design is from a website that doesn’t load – rideoftomorrow.com. I hope this is just a temporary glitch, not a cloud that’s melted and gone.

Since it’s not accessible on the internet as far as I can tell, the document itself is mirrored here (and will be removed if it’s a copyright violation, so please let me know if you own the copyright).

Do read it. Not only are the illustrations excellent, so are the diagnosis and the end product.

Requirements Analysis

The Cube

Sam Pitroda’s track record – with the C-DOT – is pretty good, and his letter to the Prime Minister (you can find it here) starts off on with an unarguable fact:

Engineering education is among the key enablers of growth for transforming India’s economy. The quality of teaching and research in this sphere will play a critical role in the emergence of our country as a global knowledge leader. It will also provide vital inputs for enhancing productivity across sectors. In the past two decades, we have seen an eight-fold increase in the number of institutions imparting engineering education at the undergraduate level. Yet, there are some fundamental issues that need to be addressed.

But a little further down, he aims his ire at that old whipping horse – the curriculum. “Several recent studies“, he writes, “have flagged the problem of unemployability of engineering graduates, largely because curriculum and syllabi are not quite compatible with industry requirements.”

Methinks the industry doth protest too much.

Don’t forget that this is the same industry which told us that the dawn of the knowledge era means that it’s not what you know, but how fast you can learn. Either the industry was wrong, or it’s trying to shoot the wrong dawg. And since I haven’t heard much in terms of U-turns from the knowledge-industry votaries, it does look like this is a case for PETA.

Also, don’t forget that things in engineering’s Sad Cafe change very slowly if they ever change at all. Galerkin goes all the way back to the century before last, and even Harrington and Horowitz & Sahni go back several decades. Timoshenko’s books wouldn’t be classics if they were obsolete already, would they? We can go on and on in this vein, but that’s another argument for another day.

Coming back to the Knowledge Commission’s letter, I disagree with all the 9 recommendations they make. Sure, they’re all correct, but fixing them won’t fix the problem. Students follow the quality law, which, if stated explicitly anywhere, would be on the lines of the Law of Minimum Potential Energy.  Most degrees are earned in order to get a job. So until the industry votes with its wallet and shows a clear economic benefit to a better quality of education – which involves more effort on the part of the student, the teacher, the managers, etc. etc. – why on earth would anyone in his or her right mind pay the price?

For instance, the software industry pays good bucks for things like CMMI-certification. Why? Because the buyers speak loudly and carry a big stick.

“We believe“, ends the letter, “that the changes and reforms proposed in this letter are necessary to bring about a qualitative transformation in engineering education to meet present and future needs. We look forward to being engaged in consultations for their speedy implementation.”

I’ll wait and watch. But I won’t hold my breath.

I don’t quite recall how I found this link, but it’s almost enough to turn me into a believer in the theory of synchronicity. Almost, but not quite.

Be that as it may, Mary Eisenhart’s article – read it here – was written exactly 2 years before I happened on it, which has to be an unexplained coincidence.

Discussing the “sad state of music education” she recounts David Wish’s approach to teaching. He gives the kids what they want, turning it later into what he thinks they need. The success of this method is a little intriguing since it’s used at a child-education level. Using the instant-gratification-to-motivate is a fairly well accepted approach in adult education, but most theorists frown on treating kids the same way. The usual mantra is to get them to learn-it-right, probably based on the principle that unlike adults, the little nippers have no alternative.

The article / interview is well written, and there’s a lot in it that a teacher can learn to successfully show that La VIda Luca is not so Luca, given the sad state of so many other fields of education.

Not least this nugget:

I took it on myself to start giving guitar lessons to the kids in my 1^st and 2^nd grade classes. That was the sum total of my aspiration: I felt it could be done, I felt it should be done, and it was something I could do.

Well written, sensible and stirring.

For something less out of T.S.Eliot than the New York Times article on salaries and performance in teaching (look here), check out this article by Peter Coy. Rather than addressing salary as the only aspect, Coy discusses the inflexibilities of both employers and employees.

This is an interesting way to look at things.

Employer inflexibility relates to the level of skills they want, the price they’re willing to pay for it and their tolerance of variations from that expected level. Sample this extract:

“Whenever employers want a more vulnerable workforce, they declare a labor shortage,” says Ana Avendaño, chief counsel and director of the immigration worker program for the AFL-CIO. She has a point.“

Indeed, she does. And “higher pay“, Coy points out, “is no panacea“. And rather than leave it at that, he takes some time to draw out a line of argument.

Employee inflexibility relates principally to a reluctance to learn new skills, a reluctance to relocate.

I can sympathize with the employees on this one. I’ve dealt with more than my fair share of intransigent idiots masquerading as engineers, so it’s not like I’m soft at heart. It’s just that I think that some truths are self-evident. First, that it can be terrible to work at something you hate. How, in all seriousness, can you expect a 40-something machine tool operator to switch to becoming a part of the health-care support system simply because this line is less likely to be “outsourced”? Second, it can be hell to learn new skills, knowing all the while that the skill you’re learning may depreciate faster than you acquire it.

I can do worse than quote Vijay Nambisan on this (though his context was slightly different – read about it here).  Describing the attitudes of the more-successful few who are convinced the “lazy” many need to be kicked, he writes

“Those who said it were, of course, the ones supposed to do the kicking. I never heard any of the kickers volunteer: ‘Kick me, I want to get on in life’“