01/14 Press Conference at SDM

Today at SDM several journalists from various Karnataka newspaper companies came to interview us. Their questions ranged from our perspective of the Indian culture, SDM Institute, Indian business approaches, and the differences between the MBA program in the US to the one provided at SDM, and the American perspective of outsourcing, offshoring, and expatriate opportunities for Americans in India. Gene, Mary, Harvey, and Nancy represented our crew well. After the press heard our thoughts, they asked some of the SDM students questions.

One of the issues I have since thought about is the Indian educational perspective. Culturally, Indians hold high educational standards- at least those that can afford it. Students choose areas of study that will better their social status and favorably represent their family. Consequently the nation is regarded as the second largest reservoir of engineers, scientists, managers, and skilled personal to China.

With this ambition there is high competition. BEING INDIAN by Pavan K Varma explains this competition best in the following excerpt from a chapter titled Wealth: The myth of other worldliness: "Indian guaranteed only the survival of the fittest; the opportunities were few, the level playing fields fewer, and the people seeking the same breakthroughs many. For every success story there are hundreds who failed and thousands waiting to compete. " (Pg. 72) During the press conference many of the students voiced the high degree of pressure they felt to succeed, be placed with a company, and score extremely high on their tests. In one session, Ramesh gave our class an example of the high degree of competition Indian students encounter. Lets say, of 250,000 test takers there are only 1500 entrance seats to the 6 most important schools! Ramesh also explained that in Indian culture there are a series of questions- which family, which school, which college, which company...