Lost in the Ocean of Incompetence!?

So here we are in NIT Warangal - supposed to be among the elite in India, second only to the top IITs. Yet we see companies coming for placements and interns and returning, recruiting one or two on their way. Some even return without recruiting anyone. So who is to blame – the college or the students!?

Why Are We Not Taught That is Required!?
Nowadays, companies recruit only if a candidate is worthy enough – they don’t come with the aim of recruiting ‘n’ candidates to any campus. So the students have no choice but to strive for excellence in all the spheres. Yet, even the best falter at the crucial steps more than once….

As far as computer science is concerned, they concentrate mainly on data structures and algorithm analysis. Even then, we are taught only data structures, leaving the algorithm part to get lost in the mist of ignorance. If anyone feels I’m exaggerating, I’ll say this – I attended three rounds of interview when Amazon.com came for interns and for every algorithm/pseudo code/working code they asked, they wanted me to analyze the time complexity (and also the space complexity in certain cases). They expect the most effective code even if it takes a little more time to develop – something our curriculum never stresses on…

Obsolete Syllabus!?
The course syllabus seems to be hardly in sync with the current industry expectations and standards. The first year syllabus can be justified since it is the same for all the branches. But I wonder why we studied network analysis and maths in second year – I don’t say they are completely irrelevant, but do we really need to sacrifice subjects like object oriented programming for them!? Everyone expects a 3rd yr CSE student to know about virtual functions, placement new, multiple inheritance, etc. But we were hardly taught these subjects, as we were “busy deriving Norton’s Law or finding Laplace transforms”. I wonder why these subjects are never mentioned in the placement and intern interviews if our college considers them so important!?

And now, in 3rd year, we are studying “Theory of Computation” – which even the teacher feels bears very little relevance in the present scenario. And “Microprocessors” which seems to be a repeat of last semester’s “Systems Programming”. Since we spend our time like this beating around the bush, it’s no wonder many are unable to comply with the required standards.

Can We Really Study All This On Our Own!?
The other side of the coin – everything can’t be taught in the college, students have to study on their own. But do they really expect to study the core subjects on our own, while on the other hand, irrelevant subjects are taught in class. I accept a teacher can’t teach everything - it’s our responsibility too. We can study on our own after we are taught 40%, but you can’t expect us to do the same after being taught only 10%. Even now, if it’s possible, I would like some faculty of the CSE dept. to spare some time and teach the basics of algorithm analysis and object oriented programming to the 3rd years. Or we might be in for some more ducks when companies come for interns.


It’s too late for anything to be done for us, but hopefully the authorities would accept the change in the corporate world and the change would be reflected in the curriculum, so that at least our juniors would be able to match the expectations….