A week back I was talking to a friend of mine in a college in central Travancore and he was complaining that his HOD is not allowing him to choose a project topic that he likes. The fellow wants to develop a GTK application. The HOD not only has got not any clue about GTK, but he insists that all the students join a particular institution in Cochin.
Having heard this I called up a few friends of mine in various colleges across Kerala. I was surprised to hear similar stories, especially from self financing colleges. I had a respect for self financing colleges cos of the opportunity they give to the students of Kerala. But if their management allows these kinds of HODs or staffs to exploit the students it will affect the colleges reputation.
I wont write any names here. But I want the students to comment their experience. If you had a bad experience with your project or seminar, or if you are being exploited in the name of it, write it down as a comment. Let the world know.
PS: I dont mind, you writing the name of the culprits in the comment box.
My brother has this problem – the teachers are blindly rejecting the project applications. But they have not suggested the students to go to any particular institution.
But the reasons provided for the rejection are insane – one of the project was reject “because its an online app”!
Comment by Binny V A — February 4, 2008 @ 9:52 am
Funny that this shud come up at a time when its in time for my own project. I am going to ignou to gather more information on the same…god knows what will happen…will keep this space updated though
Comment by TheAnand — February 4, 2008 @ 3:26 pm
It is indeed a pathetic situation.
Kenny,
You told about the HOD and institutions. But there is another, more serious problem – 99% of the projects done in Kerala are either:
(1) Done by some private institution and used by many students over several years.
Or
(2) Downloaded from the internet.
And the projects are of very low quality. I am ashamed to say that I studied in Kerala with a bunch of Fools for my engineering. Yes. Except very few colleagues, all the others had no interest in engineering. And most of them came to study CS because they could not get through the medical entrance.
And here is the lighter side:
Some of us did projects in C, C++, VB, VC++…… (Platform dependent?)
On the day of presentation, we copied the files to a USB stick and demonstrated our works.
Another group of students from my class did their projects in Java. (Platform Independent, Portable, Architecture Neutral…..)
All of them carried computers from an Institution in Cochin to our college in Kottayam. Their projects run only in the specific computers in which they did their projects. Hmmm Java is indeed portable.
Comment by Niyaz PK — February 4, 2008 @ 9:49 pm
Don’t sweat over the “bunch of Fools” phrase guys.
I love and admire my classmates. They are my very good friends. They are my life. But they are fools too.
Comment by Niyaz PK — February 4, 2008 @ 9:53 pm
[...] Kenney Jacob has writen an article on academic projects here. [...]
Pingback by TT’S Jottings -Ver 0.01.01.1 » Blog Archive » Academic Projects — February 4, 2008 @ 10:25 pm
I agree with Kenny. Being an engineering faculty member myself, I have noticed several covert attempts in wooing students to private institutes. I have made a related comment on my blog on this. http://gnubox.dyndns.org/wordpress/?p=28
Comment by vu2swx — February 4, 2008 @ 10:45 pm
I am a student from Mangalam engineering college and I believe you are mentioning our college. Our CS HOD is forcing us to do project in Focuz technologies. Only one batch got exception because those idiots enjoy a good relationship with out HOD. Can some one tell me how much commission our HOD is getting
Comment by Idontwantogetmyselfkilled — February 5, 2008 @ 6:41 am
hello “Idontwantogetmyselfkilled”, u said ur hod forced to do project in focuz, thats bad, did u respond? did u fight against it? if not sad of you
you lost your money right, you went to focus right? thats too sad and ashamed too…
maybe i am that idot you mentioned, and u said i hav been exempted coz i hav good relation, do u know that all students hav to do their project in the college? thats so…
i thought why shld i waste ma money, and i also thought if i utilise that money in some business il benefit from that too, not by hearing someones news or not by analysing my hod, its my degree its my project.
i didnt went up askin him abt some institution, i went and said, hey i dnt know java a bit, but i have the confidence, cld i do it with out any institution at ma college… simple, thats wat all faculty likes to hear too…
so dnt become urselfs a idot blaming on someothers, if u are not gonna fight in ur life… its simple answer that ur lifes a failure…
and i feel am confident abt wat am sayin, n i belive in myself, so i dnt mind to tell my name, ma names Linoy Joseph
“Dont Blame Others For Wat You Are Doing, if some others are utilising u, its your weakness, dnt blame them”
Linoy Joseph
Comment by Mr. Idot of "idntwanttogetmyselfkilled" — February 6, 2008 @ 8:41 am
Linoy,
I couldn’t agree more.
I too have this problwm with the authorities. I will not do anything for them.
And Mr.Idontwantogetmyselfkilled, yes you should that(get yourself killed) if you cannot fight for what you believe in.
Comment by Niyaz PK — February 6, 2008 @ 2:05 pm
When I was doing my final year project ,I applied to do project in an excellent company (an american software company).They were paying stipend and giving licences of software to do the project free of cost for this program.They asked me to get a recommendation mail for our team from our HOD.
When i conveyed our HOD (Electronics) about this,he was very reluctant to send the mail.He was saying that this project was not at good for electronics students since embedded vc++ programming was involved. Later he said that he may send it .Later we got a mail from the company that our team cannot proceed bcos the department didn’t send the email.We managed to send a recommendation letter from principal by courier but then the last date was over.This is my personal experience regarding authorities and academic projects.
Comment by Maneesh J — February 6, 2008 @ 3:33 pm
Maneesh,
I am so sorry.
Atleast send him this link. Let him know he is hated.
Comment by Niyaz PK — February 6, 2008 @ 4:44 pm
[...] Read on… [...]
Pingback by || the C. U. S. A. T. diaries || » Blog Archive » Academic Project - A Means to Exploit Students ????? — February 7, 2008 @ 11:02 pm
Hi,
In the first place which one of you is even intrested in
programming? I have been offering training in the very
core of computing languages i.e. C/C++ – with indepth
training in pointers, structures, unions, templates, stl
and now boost along with open source libs for GUI,
database etc. In spite of having 15 years experience
in programming, being a pioneer in win/lin/java/c# programming I find most students intrested only in
learning superficial stuff which will get them a’jolly’ in
the shortest time possible. India a software super power
indeed!
Comment by K.Ashok Shenoy — February 15, 2008 @ 4:25 pm
Ashok,
True
Comment by Niyaz PK — February 16, 2008 @ 2:50 pm
sir i am Ganesh from bangalore
i am a final year bca student in anational college bangalore
sir i want billing system project developed in dotnet please help me out sir its urgent to me
Comment by Ganesh — March 5, 2008 @ 6:04 pm
At least I studied in a government college, I believe Kenny did that too.
Whatever you say about the teaching standards of the govt colleges, I enjoyed a freedom of thought and expression. And it also enabled me to get what I want on my own.
And I believe it helped Kenney a lot to be free of the bandwagon mentality.
Comment by Issac — March 13, 2008 @ 1:12 am
Yes, a lot of this happens in every institution. But in a much talked about and publicized college, it shouldn’t . M O P Vaishnav College for Women is the most overrated pile of shit. They have a well selling media course so it gets the college good media attention. The teachers are extremely biased to who ever do their department cleaning, typing jobs. Other students who do just their student job of studying well and writing don’t even appear as good students. Making research papers for teachers for their PhDs is one the least impressive things you could do for them. For example, Mrs. Vijayalaksmi Sailapathi, corrects papers chatting in the dept. We had to answer a question on SEBI guidelines. We wrote utter nonsense but filled 3 sheets for which we got nearly full marks. Another kid who wrote the right answer got just half the mark. She corrects on the basis of names. Taking efforts for your projects makes NO SENSE in this case. Eitherway you ll get marks only if you were her servant around that time or you begged her showing your intimidation. Presenting a superb PPT which in dept subject knowledge got me nothing. I don’t take such efforts any more.
Comment by mouni — August 9, 2008 @ 12:18 pm
U r lucky Issac to get freedom of thot n expression.
Comment by mouni — August 9, 2008 @ 12:20 pm
[...] Chromepet Vaishnav. Of course, the dress code was introduced in my alma mater -MCC, WCC & MOP Vaishnav, but since nobody even reads the notice board in these colleges, authorities had to drop the [...]
Pingback by The college dress code « spinnin’ a yarn — August 14, 2008 @ 5:50 pm
[...] Students are exploited in many ways by their staff, management and even the government. Read about exploitation using academic proects here. [...]
Pingback by Exploiting Students - This time its lottery tickets — November 12, 2008 @ 8:59 am
What can be done by letting the world know about such practices?? Nothing can be done with students of boneless backbones. Nothing means nothing to eradicate such practices. Present day students are too bad in doing the right thing at the right time. They know only to hear what others say and believe its essence rather than understanding what the core is.
So the title ‘Exploiting…’ can be restated as ‘Molding’. May not suite the meaning, but thats it.
Comment by SAF — November 12, 2008 @ 1:12 pm
Lessons ‘enforced’ from childhood:
1) You should comply with parents’ thoughts and ideas — they’re right even IF they’re wrong.
2) You should NEVER answer back your teachers.. after all, they are know-alls.
3) Winning is NOT important.. just participation is. (WTF?!)
4) Marks are the basis for EVERYTHING in future. You study well or not.. your answer papers should reflect a cent percentage.
5) You shouldn’t take your revenge on teachers… someone ‘up there’ will make them pay for it. (WTF?!)
Well, I’m not an engg., but I’ve studied in an engg. college to see its shody atmosphere. I know at least 2-3 people who consulted me to know what ‘namespaces’ in C++ is because they’re teacher don’t know it (well, the funny fact is that most of these ‘lecturers’ are just B.Tech passouts from some other near-by college).
The oldies that stick on on like mold on to the dept. are super-strict. No questions in class.. what I say is the NORM. You should only study from the books I SAY. WTF?, does a 60+ teacher in CS know what the latest lang is?
BTW, why the F*CK are we still stuck is Java/C/C++ when you have Python/Ruby/ to do your project on?
Then again, I wasn’t an engg. student, just a computer hobbyist in search of a proper guide. In the end, I decided to join the Dark Side and did my MBA.
Wow.. don’t make me start what we had to do there…
Comment by Carb0n — November 26, 2008 @ 12:14 pm
i’m doing final year project for dotnet.dotnet is best for a project or not ?please send the suggestion quickly
Comment by shanthi — December 15, 2008 @ 7:44 pm
Yes, the academic projects system in Kerala is pathetic.
I had also such experiences during my college days. We wished to implement our own project ideas. We were able to succeed in that, but suffered a lot.
I think the following are the main reasons for this situation:
*)Lack of knowledge about latest technologies among the teaching staff in Engineering colleges
*)Lack of interest among students themselves to learn and experiment with new things
*)Lack of genuine guidance if some one really overcome the above hurdles. Most of the private centers doesn’t have the capability to promote such attempts.
We are responsible to suggest some solutions also if we are raising problems. I can only suggest the following:
*)While appointing teaching staff for an Engineering College, the management should consider to appoint innovative and experienced(at least in programming) staff also. They should make a balanced team of Academic as well as innovative staffs. These staffs should develop their knowledge according to the new happenings in the industry
*)Students also need to thing out of box bravely. They must experiment with new technologies like Web3.0 languages like Python,Ruby etc as well as the traditional/academic languages such as C/C++, Java etc.
Personally, I can offer some guidance for small academic projects in Python, Mobile etc, if the students possess self-learning capabilities with some sort of creativity (or at least interested to do their projects in a different way)
Comment by Raj — February 17, 2009 @ 1:16 pm