Posted on 06/22/2009 12:40:47 PM PDT by E. Pluribus Unum
OK, before you get your knickers in a twist, let's put the CEO's comments into context. Vineet Nayar, the highly respected CEO of HCL Technologies, one of India's hottest IT services vendors, was speaking this morning in New York City to an audience of about 50 customers and partners when he related a recent experience with an education official in a large U.S. state.
The official wanted to know why HCL, a $2.5 billion (revenue) company with more than 3,000 people across 21 offices in 15 states, wasn't hiring more people in his state. Vineet's short answer: because most American college grads are "unemployable." (In fairness to HCL, the company recently announced plans to open a delivery center in another state, North Carolina, and invest $3.2 million and hire more than 500 employees there over the next five years under a Job Development Investment Grant.)
Many American grads looking to enter the tech field are preoccupied with getting rich, Vineet said. They're far less inclined than students from developing countries like India, China, Brazil, South Africa, and Ireland to spend their time learning the "boring" details of tech process, methodology, and tools--ITIL, Six Sigma, and the like.
As a result, Vineet said, most Americans are just too expensive to train--despite the Indian IT industry's reputation for having the most exhaustive boot camps in the world. To some extent, he said, students from other highly developed countries fall into the same rut.
In an interview following his presentation, Vineet said HCL and other employers need to have a greater influence on the tech curricula of U.S. colleges and universities, to make them more real-world and rigorous. For the most part, he said, those institutions haven't been receptive to such industry partnerships.
More broadly, Vineet echoed the concerns expressed by other CEOs, including SAS Institute's Jim Goodnight and Cisco's John Chambers, about the failure of the U.S. education system to prepare the country's next-generation tech workforce (a subject Goodnight and others will dive into at the InformationWeek 500 Conference, Sept. 13 to 15).
Beyond the need to bolster competencies in math, the hard sciences, and basic problem solving, U.S. schools at all levels must place a greater emphasis on global history, foreign languages, and other subjects that prepare students for jobs and life outside this country. How many grads of U.S. colleges are ready or even willing to work abroad? Vineet asked rhetorically. "We need to define the American dream to be more global in nature," he said.
The cynical among you will counter that some American students, having seen tech jobs move to lower-wage countries or go to H1-B visa holders, have lost their appetite for process-oriented IT professions. But if this country's economic future is indeed rooted in technology--whether in health care, energy, transportation, or the tech industries themselves--then the status quo won't do.
but, but, but, didn’t michele o. get her degree in african studies? .... and she got a big-money job.... /satire
“How many people graduating from college in the USA WANT to work abroad in some third world hell-hole or a European socilism?”
....amen! a former co-worker of mine was given an assignment in Belgium...while there he went to the dentist...the dentist was so bad, John literally got out of the chair and walked out...when he flew home for Christmas he saw his old dentist....everyday stuff we take for granted here is light years ahead of much of the world.
They are too busy being fed feelgood nonsense and anti-capitalist propaganda to learn anything useful. And most have gotten too soft to be able to perform any reasonable level of physical work.
You people have drunk the globalist kool-aid. There is NOTHING wrong with the technical workforce in the US. It is just too expensive to pay competitive salaries and big bonuses to management. Management wins every time. When I start to see articles critical of incompetent IT management it will be a cold day in hell.
But we got “Womyn’s Studies” not to mention super academic Cornell West rappin his backside off to about stickin it to the man. I think this Indian guy is a racist mysoginist, dats what I think.
I was a payroll supervisor in the late 70’s.
Had an opening for an assistant.
Headhunters sending me ‘applicants’.
One young lady filled out the application with handwriting I could barely read, and claimed she had attended 3 different ‘business schools’.
Not only did I have a hard time reading any of the words she wrote, she spelled business “ bussiness “ in 4 different places.
Neither she nor her headhunter could understand that I rejected her over the issue of accuracy in lifetime payroll records.
Americans who were not employable go back a long way, IMO.
As a design professional, I met with a number of grads applying for jobs. These 20-somethings could barely spell and had an overly casual attitude during the interview. God forbid I send them into the field as a jobsite representative (too dirty).
We eventually hired a couple of Nigerian lads as well as an Indian (naturalized citizen) P.E. We paid them well and two of them actually helped their wives start their own businesses. At 5 PM on Fridays, these guys would often stick around to discuss their drawings or reports and how they could be improved. It only meant a couple of more minutes in the office but it revealed their work ethic.
I did stipulate “many”. I’ve worked with some masters-level interns who were just amazing, but that’s a filtered group already, they had what it takes to voluntarily fill out all the forms and actually get into grad school.
I’ve also had to work with people who point to a schematic symbol for “diode” and ask, what’s that?
I think he means the general crowd of kids who get a BS and then go look for a job. One that starts at 10, give or take a half-hour, and that does not intrude too much on their social lives too much. Oh, and pays $98K and what, no bonus?
What about the thousands of IT folks that have years of experience under their belts and have been laid off? Or does Vineet consider them unemployable too?
The bigger problem is the lack of faith in the concept of progress created by science.
Such pessimism is not prevalent in the future third world powerhouses. Despite vastly greater social inequities, greater environmental depredation, and immense issues and problems of all kinds, from economic to cultural, you do not find the depression, the lack of hope prevalent in the West, but a can do spirit and ethos that older Americans may well recognize.
I gradduated from a american university.
I have great language skills. Let me tell you im very fluent in american.
As far as 4 other skils, let me just say that I am so skilled that I have skils that I don't even know about yet!
Do they still actually teach history in college? Does that fit in with their liberal curriculum?
Engineering students are wowing some employers with advanced skill sets.
Business students too, I have been impressed with their uptake of tough subject matter like accounting.
I did see a girl taking drafting that did not know what communism was, scarey.
Other than that, it is probably all fluff...
Would not surprise me one bit, as more and more colleges/universities concentrate more and more on diversity, community service, woman’s studies, etc, ie: indoctrination.
Unfortunately, he's got a good point. I've spent my entire life in high tech and I have seen the same trend. A lot of the younger clients I meet couldn't use a slide rule to figure out the cost of a Happy Meal at McDonald's.
Our education system has broken down so badly that, if I had it to do all over again, I'd end up going to a trade school instead of a 4-year university. Most 4-year university's today teach crapola instead of the knowledge and skills today's grads need. And, with so many high tech jobs being exported offshore, the "dumbing down" of our high tech community will only accelerate.
BUT it is the American Hip Hop Way to promote the incompetent filth and bash Achievement.They did not get the Memo..
Fast-forward a couple of months and the job is open again and a good source on the inside fills him in why. The 4 year person with an Accounting degree was fired because of the inability to do long division with a pencil. I think I picked that up in 2nd or 3rd grade.
BS! Foreign languages aren't good for anything unless you're doing intel work or on-the-ground aid to 3rd worlders work -- and for those, the languages you need are mostly not those that any rational person is going to study in school -- either you're a native/semi-native speaker (in addition to your English), or your employer puts you through an intensive language training program. All those tech workers in India have to learn ENGLISH to get those jobs, and English is the only language Americans need in order to be competitive in the employment market.
The last thing American students need to be spending more school/study time on is foreign languages.
Darned funny and probably true!
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