Saturday, December 26, 2009

The rubbish that is called a HSSM course.

After looking at the HSSM's being offered being offered next semester I could broadly put them into 2 categories. The eight courses being offered are evenly divided between the two categories.

1. Courses offered by the brotherhood of JV
2. The rest.

Some of the important areas where we offer no courses are

1. Economics.
2. Finance
3. Literature
4. Public Administration
5. Law
6. Sociology (There are courses offered by Anuja Madan and Romesh Singh but it's more of an exception)
7. Management
8. History

There is much more and I could go on forever .... I hope you get the picture.

Why should students be forced to study such limited offerings, in some cases taught by inexperienced, self styled "Gurus" with no objective evaluation of the course content. Is there no objection from the side of the faculty ?

If a UG student must do 20 credits from within this set of courses, we should seriously reconsider having compulsory HSSMs. I couldn't find more rubbish even if I looked in a garbage dump.

Tuesday, December 08, 2009

Creating monsters.....

I am part of the first dual degree batch. In the beginning there were 60+ of us. After 5.5 years and about a 100+ research papers later, most of us are still here. The question most of me and my batch mates are asking ourselves is "What next ?". Circumstances have conspired to make us unwanted by most and looked at skeptically by the remaining.
As the placement process unravels it's becoming clearer that our degrees, our work and our orientation is becoming an unbearable burden. Companies feel that we are either too "research minded" to work for them or likely to run away for a PhD. So most want nothing to do with us. Those who are ok with us, tend to have a selection process we are ill prepared for. If somebody were to ask me about crypto or cvit people about vision or Sarika about RoboCup we would blow them out of the water. Sadly nobody seems to want to ask us these things. It seems that data structures and puzzles are the flavor of the day. Most ug4's have spent the last 2 months, working very hard to prepare for the placement season. Most of us have spent the last 2 months making a final thrust to get that last paper accepted or to start giving shape to our thesis. Not an ideal scenario.
The faculty would like to believe that having exposed us to top class research, many of us would be motivated to pursue higher studies. 2 out of 60+ have gone for a PhD. Not numbers to go wild about. This begs the question : Has IIIT created a (confused)monster with it's dual degree programs ?
While I leave this question as a topic for open debate, I do have a few questions about the dual degree program.
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Section 1 : Jobs
Q1: Are there relevant jobs for 60 dual degree graduates in Computer science and Electronics ?
Q:2 Has the institute (faculty) spent enough time educating companies about the dual degree program ?
Q3: Has the institute made an effort to educate companies that the hiring process they follow for ug's is not optimal for MSbR
Q4: Has each faculty member asked himself how he can help get his students a job ?
Q5: Do the Institute and the faculty have a burden of responsibility to help get a student a job ?
Q6: Are all faculty members in agreement with or even aware of this ?
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Section 2: The Research

Q1: Has there been an effort to normalize/standardize the quality of MS thesis' ?
Q2: Has there been an effort to analyze the quality of research work done as part of this program?
Q3: Have we asked ourselves if we are publishing for the sake of publishing ?
Q4: Have all students been provided the means to present their research work at the relevant forums (i.e. sponsorship for conferences) ?
Q5: Do we provide enough faculty and by extension research areas for our students to work on?
Q6: Do we always have the resources to help a student complete his/her work ?

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Section 3: The program itself

Q1: Almost all the dual degree students will complete their degree in 6 years. In this aspect is the program satisfactory?
Q2: Why is the proportion of students from DD interested in pursuing a PhD so dismal ?
Q3: Has the institute thought about students stuck in the program even unable to do their B.Tech ?
Q4: Does an average High School student understand what he is getting into when choosing DD?
Q5: Has the institute taken initiatives to ensure that every DD student is at least paid a minimum stipend apart from a tuition wavier?
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Questions for the future:

Q1: Considering the issues computer science and electronics dual degree students have, was it prudent to introduce other courses like PostBSc, DD in computational natural sciences and DD in computational linguistics ?

Q2: Will we have a complete overhaul in the way we go about dealing with the DD students and their future aspirations, be it a job or a PhD or even an MBA ?

Q3: Is the institute going to clean up it's act when it comes to financial planning, to ensure students are paid a decent stipend and provided adequate funds for presenting their research work?


PS1: For fellow students - Don't write comments in a moment of frustration/anger. Think before you write.

PS2: For others - Don't write rhetorical junk. Appreciate reality, and yes....Think before you write too.

Wednesday, December 02, 2009

My webpage is up.....

11 semesters late, but it's never too late is it :) Click here to visit my webpage. My thanks to Anuj Gupta and Prasant Gopal who allowed me to blatantly rip off the template. This is how a theoreticians web page should look like. In keeping with SIGACT's finest traditions(lame text only websites), mine is text only too.