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.
“...you do not find the depression, the lack of hope prevalent in the West...”
If only someone could give us hope, and possibly change...
In those countries they aren’t pounded with a lifelong message of nihilism that the US population is propagandized with.
I concur that we’ve probably got them beat there.
Not to mention demanding their mothers bring their Pizza Hut pizza to the basement when it’s delivered...
Wrong.
Fluency in a foreign language is great for impressing chicks!
(I wish I had learned one.)
I will agree that the most important thing is to learn a skill that the global market values. Learning additional languages, however, is highly recommended as a supplementary skill.
BTW: Stop with the "Third World" nonsense as a) such terminology is obsolete and b) you should know where most of the economic growth in this world is coming from.
And that, in a nutshell, is part of the problem.
We wanted to be uplifted by a transcendental figure who gave us hope and made us feel good about ourselves without much exertion on our part. That would be religious figures, at least in India, or pop stars!
Cold eyed denizens of the Third World place no such hope in their politicians. They prefer calm boring technocrats like the Indian PM and finance types, and the Chinese technocrati.
Their recourse is to look to Western science and advancement and to improve upon the progress made in the West.
The Englightement Ethos lives. In the East.
“Sounds like some the areas where I work.”
We have been held back and Punished because of this Great society nonsense!!
Nothing surprising here. Surprised that we haven’t been reading articles like this every day...
The colleges here in Utah seen to graduate seriously educated and hardworking kids (judging from the Weber State
kids in my area).
BS! These companies have absolutely no desire to hire Americans in the first place. I have several certs, including ITIL and Six Sigma, but have been out of work for well over a year. These lying frauds make up their numbers and noone in the media questions it. It’s just like US intelligence agencies complaining that they are having to bring in foreigners to fill the positions, because there aren’t enough US applicants.
Rats have an incompetency factor It goes with the Word Liberal. What is more synonymous than failure and Democrat??
I had a young lady apply for my administrative assistant position. She sent in a resume where it was all blue, all curlicue font, I had to change it to Times just to be able to read it. She misspelled assistant several times. I round filed it, sent her back an email and told her to quit with the cutesy, and have someone proof read her resume, she'd have better luck getting an interview.
And what's bad is that I am a heading hunting agency. Some of these people applying are frighteningly ... stupid.
While I can’t afirm the IT sentiments of this fellow, American communications skills are atrocious.
Look at some of the posts in this thread.
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.
Six sigma and ITIL are about manufacturing and production type responses. Most of American education in engineering ( unless you specifically spend time studying manufacturing or quallity)is theoretical in nature -—how do you design an IC or a turbine or a motor. What this guy really wants is a bunh of QA or manufacturing specialists who have PhDs in design ——ain’t gonna happen. Besides Chinese, Sri Lankan, and Indian grads will work for next to nothing and be grateful for the job, then come to the States on H1B visas and take jobs away from American engineers who are paid more.
Mormons (with a few notable exceptions) tend to have an excellent work ethic, in my experience.
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