Why Is BTech in India Four Years Long?
An Undergraduate Engineering degree is the most popular degree in India. If you are reading this and you are indian, there are high chances that you are an engineer.
Try to remember the subjects in your Bachelor’s degree. Let’s try to remove everything that was useless in that degree and see what is left. Regardless of your engineering branch, the first year of engineering is same for all. In most cases, there are only one or two relevant subjects to your branch. So, out of 12 subjects in first year, you are never going to use 10 subjects. Let’s get rid of them. The last year has very few subjects. Most students study very little and just waste their time in the last year (smoke, drink, hike, go home, pretty much whatever tickles their fancy). Let’s get rid of that extra time. So, you have got a curriculum that you can very conveniently finish in 3 years.
This is not a crazy idea. In UK, you have 3-years Bachelor’s degrees. College administration will try to fool you by saying things like we are promoting interdisciplinary studies.
Then, why are our degrees 4 years long? Because Universities in US would not accept a 3 years Bachelor’s degree. A huge chunk of engineering students go to US for higher studies. Even if they don’t have a plan they would want that option to be open. Not many BSc student go to US for higher studies, thus most BSc programs in India are 3 years long. But a Bachelors of Science from IISc is a 4-year long program, so that they can study in US.
Why would they not accept 3 year degrees? Because in US a Bachelors degree (both engineering and science) is 4 years long. In most countries, prominent universities, universities where brightest students and brightest researchers go are public universities. But in US, most prominent universities and most universities as well are private universities. This includes all ivy leagues (Harvard, Yale, MIT, Cornell, Brown, Dartmouth, University of Pennsylvania), Stanford and most universities that does not have
statein their name. Their main goal is to make money, just like any other private company. A 4-year program gets them tuition fee for one extra year. Accepting a students with 3-Year Bachelors program hurts the business. Now because of this, state universities in US also has to fall in line and keep a 4-year degree, so that their students remain eligible to study at these private university. Of course, they would never accept that this is why they do it.
This is not just limited to Bachelors. A PhD program in US is 5 years long, while it does not have to be. In Europe(including UK), PhD program are typically 3 years long. Some programs are 4-years long, but that is max. A PhD student is a highly intelligent individual who is substantially underpaid. Having a PhD student stick around for 2 extra years, saves money on teaching and research staff. Often advisers intentionally block doctorates, so that they can utilize their students as cheap resources. Universities would argue that a 5-Year PhD would give you substantial research exposure, which is true. But again, they are just trying to fool people. A 7-year PhD program would give even more research exposure. Heck, better yet 10-years would give even better exposure.
- How to fix it?
Indians could have handled the situation smartly. We should have a 3-Years Bachelors
program and when a 21 year old adult(?) thinks that opportunity cost of studying at a
university that secretly invests in fossil fuels and not earning for two years is
justified they can take extra courses to finish credit-requirements to satisfy a 4-Year
degree program.
(Hint: Name of that university rhymes with
Howard. Also, what a dumb investment!)
I wasted a year in the prime of my life because of stupidity of Indian Education system and profit-hungry private colleges and so does many other students.