[Guest article by Sujai Karampuri, founder of Sloka Telecom]
When I joined B.Tech in Electronics and Communications nearly two decades ago, I was told that whatever I learn in the college will be of little use to me in my life because we will not be using any of the stuff taught in the program. I took that advice quite seriously. Instantly I convinced myself that it didn’t really matter if I did not pay any attention to the classes. I just had to pass and somehow make it through the 4 years. The campus itself had enough reputation that it will carry me through in my life, so why waste time in studying something which is of no use to me in the long run?
The graduating seniors who had passed out came back a year later to visit us and reaffirmed the same opinion, that not much of what I learn in my B.Tech will be of any use in ‘real’ life. Because the ‘real’ life is so different that I would end up doing something quite different. It was true. Most of my seniors who graduated from the college ended up in MS programs in USA but had already switched to Computer Science, while few others got into IIMs thereby leaving nearly 95% of our subjects behind, and some others got into jobs at Hindustan Lever, Infosys, HCL, etc, securing jobs in marketing or software for health, insurance, banking, never having to bother with B. Tech subjects ever again.
I guess I was always a ‘big’ picture person even as a student. My ‘big’ thinking suggested that the scores and marks in the B.Tech subjects will not affect my life at all. I decided not to study more than what was required to pass the exams. Why unnecessarily waste time on something that is irrelevant in ‘real’ life? Instead, I spent time on other things which seemed to make sense- like painting, art, debating, and of course, making friends and falling in love. Since I believed these other things will remain with me for the rest of my life, it made sense to invest in them.
An engineer uncle told his graduating engineer nephew that he will not use more than 5% of what he studied. That’s what we have been told and that’s what we believed. After nearly 16 years since my graduation, I have a completely different story to tell. I hope this reaches out to some of the passionate engineers in the colleges of India. I am a part of a technology product company in wireless space and this is our story.
During my first year in engineering, we had a course in English. I skipped most of the classes, and for the exams I spent only 2 hours of studying, enough to pass. We all reasoned, ‘we are engineers, so why do we need to learn this language?’ Today, I write many articles, prepare brochures, and write letters and reports to customers and investors. I write business plans and analysis on various topics in the industry. And I need to be correct, concise and lucid. I speak in public on a regular basis. There is so much importance to language in my daily work that nearly 50% of my job is communication. If I had known this I would have paid more attention to those English classes 20 years ago.
Then we had Chemistry. Since I wasn’t a chemical engineer I told myself this is another subject of waste. Today, we paint our wireless units with the right kind of paint taking into account the temperatures it has to withstand. We deal with various kinds of materials and choose the best ones that withstand rains and overcome the problems of rust. We experiment with materials that have right amount of conductivity, electrical resistance and other chemical properties.
Then we had a course in Physics. I was passionate about physics so I learnt a lot. But I always bemoaned that an engineer may not actually use it ever. Fortunately for me, now we deal with convection, conduction, radiation, and other shock and vibration characteristics while designing our wireless units which work in extreme weathers as outdoor units. We spent nearly 24 months on engineering a product that could cool itself and during this exercise we went back again and again to our basics in physics.
Then we had Mathematics. Today we use Fourier Transforms, Arithmetic and Geometric Series, and many other mathematical tools in our development of algorithms. Few days ago we used techniques to convert Cartesian to Polar Coordinates to use them in our algorithms. To do this we had to open the Engineering Mathematics text book taught in our first and second year.
One of the most neglected subjects was Accounting, called Economics. We hated it, ridiculed it, and completely dismissed it. ‘We are engineers, not accountants’, we told ourselves. I wish I paid little more attention – because now I continuously fail to grapple with balance sheets and profit & loss accounts though it is my mandate to understand them to take decisions. We also had Engineering Drawing. Thankfully I liked it, and now it comes again and again to aid us in making designs of our products, making CAD/CAM drawings for manufacturing them, and making 3D drawings for visualizing the product before fabricating them.
Then we had Workshop in our first/second year. There we worked with lathe machines, cutting mechanical tools, and also casting and molding where we actually dirtied our hands. For most of us, it didn’t make sense back then. We complained, ‘why should electronics engineers go through workshop?’ Today, we spend time and money in making casts for our enclosures and have to take a decision on sand cast, gravity cast or pressure die cast, and conduct great deal of research to mill, grind, and cut the exact design for our heat sinks that dissipate heat for many days and nights. Hopefully in a year we will have our own workshop. I look forward to that day with excitement.
We program our software using linked lists that we learnt in the courses on programming language and data structures. Our embedded software uses microprocessor programs in Assembly and C. We design electronic circuits, both Analog and Digital. We have a soldering iron and oscilloscopes that we use daily. Our baseband software uses Digital Signal Processing, and we continuously work on the internals of Data Networks. We use all topics of Digital Communications. We use antennas and its technologies to decide on the antenna propagation techniques and antenna patterns.
I realize that I am currently using more than 90% of what I learnt in my B. Tech, on a regular basis. I didn’t know this would happen. If I had known, I would have treated by B. Tech little differently. There is beauty in building things and seeing them work. There is satisfaction in engineering products and solutions that find a place in this ‘real’ world. There is no other joy for an engineer than being able to use the length and breadth of entire gamut of engineering. while trying to build a working product I wouldn’t trade this job for any other. May be we are not as rich, maybe we are not as successful, but we are all proud engineers. While most other engineers may say that they don’t use 90% of what they learnt, we can actually claim that we use more than 90% of what we learnt.
I want the young engineers in India to know that what they learn can be used in their lives. Instead of looking for the highest paying non-engineering job, they have a choice to look for a real engineering job. Hope we have more technology companies in India, and hope we create a generation of engineers who can actually claim they make use of what they learnt in their B.Tech. Hope they build airplanes and design ships. Hope they make cell phones and electronic gadgets. Hope they make computer games and robots. Hope they go through fun of what it means to be an engineer. Hope they will not be satisfied with just the title, but become real engineers building things.
[Reproduced from Sujai’s blog]
Very well articulated…
Lovely piece. I only hope the various departments at colleges/univs who seem to lack the conviction/enthu that what the deliver may have a real world impact also read this and get the message. I think the can-do bit is the biggest missing piece in our education landscape, and fixing that will fix a lot of these issues.
Pingback: Letter to young Engineers | Neona Innovation Technologies
Again a gr8 article but one point which is missing here why don’t we make our English/Chemistry/Physics/S/w classes interested enough to grab the attention of students??
Good point. Infact, traditional schools like DPS etc need to inculcate ‘interestingness’ in their curriculum.
Not sure whether they really give a damn to all this, owing to demand-supply equation.
Unfortunately, our education system gives more emphasis on marks or percentage rather than the actual understanding of the subject.
Since childhood, we are taught to get good numbers and ultimately secure a good ‘job’. We are never encouraged to ‘learn’ & ‘create’ something innovative.
Dear Anuj,
Thanks for the query.
Vitamin needs some sugar coating to swallow.
Any subject, subject needs a dedicated (Samuel-like:)) teacher to effectively induce into the young minds.
Today’s teachers are working mechanically and legally; there is no attachment or commitment. Of course, they may be having their own reasons like Dr YV.
Samuel,I want to be your student
…If you are as good as Samuel Jackson of “Pulp Fiction” than it will be a great learning journey for me. 
Thanks for changing our attitude towards the non engineering subjects or the humanitarian subjects of engineering.Really helpful:)
Any learning seriously done never goes waste.
Good article buddy… Keep it Up dude…
Oh! That is a very pleasant post.
Wonderful post.
99% of engineering students today fell the same way as you mentioned in the early part of your post. Unfortunate thing is the the conclusion part would never reach the engineering students.
They would be speing time on social networking sites rather than on useful sites like pluggd.in
We are good at building stuff; but for others. It’s easy to tell people to ‘build it’ but think about an average engineering graduate whose primary aim while opting for engineering was to secure a job.
Do you really think Indian engineers care about ‘building’ something? We’d not have so many services companies in the first place.
@anuj we do make our english classes fun by having a literary club in our college..
and for physics and chemistry and maths.. we had hobby centers and also churned out a windmill where we ended up using no more than our 12th standard concepts…
nicely put ..::)
Sorry to sound boring, but creating a 16th Century Windmill feels a bit dull today.
Of course it depends on the level from which you are bringing the kids up.
Arun
When you learn something .. you are earning something to yourself. now it is up to you if you wish to use it or not?
if you wish to use it.. you can else its waste of time and effort.
Nice article
Problem is not about relevance of subjects but about methodology. Focus it asks for is different. Engineer must run english to communicate more effectively not to go deeper into literature. Engineering is more about applying and building and not about research. Somebody gives you drawing and ask you what are various operations and its sequence while creating this job. That is engineering instead of asking describe operation of lathe. Then guy who has good drawing skill and better handwriting scores. There are not many challenges of building something are thrown to engineers during education that is the reason why most feel that subjects are irrelevant.
It’s not just about us and the engineering, it’s our all social life which points us to one goal “get a great job” not to “do a good job whatever you do”. Now that we realize that just getting a good job does not build a nation but a doing a great job , does hopefully we will raise our kids to value excellence rather than just street-smartness.
Great post Sujai.
I’ve always been a firm believer of all of what you said in the
post. Understand your stuff in school – you’ll always find areas
where you’ll apply them many years later.
Dear sir
The article is so refreshing….Finally;somebody has attempted to clear the cobwebs….great work sir!regards!
really nice post for us engineering students…
u know it just made me more confident of what i used to think about the engineering in spite of those comments from the people u mentioned above who say that yr btech study wont b of much use..
i am firm believer in that your money can b snatched,stolen etc..from u but once u gain knowledge it cant b detached from u!!!
yeah idiots make something like that tooo…screwing us asses for US its better do something for urs mothercountry
Itz really a nice blog. I feel this trend of following the what other collegues/seniors says is not always right. Sometimes, we also need to think why we are studying those subject. Truely said by someone in earlier posts, thatz its due to the competitive environments being made around the young engineers that they have to either study a lot to starve for good positions or to give up the situations n look for other alternatives to relax out the stresses. Just my personal opinion…
It was the way which we r thinking now..we r engineers and we don need any of da other courses..but thanks a lot b’coz of dis i came to know da importance of the other courses also..thnq so much ..
Learning everything there is to learn is ideal but then we wouldn’t be humans but learning machines with no life. After a certain stage, It is not possible to learn stuff without purpose or with the purpose being ‘exams’, the stage? maybe schooling. The zeal to learn born out of reading your article will last a day or two or max a week, after that it will be the usual ridiculing. Knowledge is just an enabler, don’t enslave yourself to it. Instead, think of doing something useful, building some product and start learning to build it. Build a business, and learn accounting to manage the balance sheets. There are solutions when there are problems, there is learning when there is work to be done.
–Jayanth
(Author of Exotic Engineer Entrepreneur, I learnt grammar to finish the novel and never repented for not learning it earlier because I knew I couldn’t)