Do parents know best?
AKHILA SEETHARAMAN
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When you talk of higher education, Hobson's choice acquires new meaning — engineering or medicine. Is there no life beyond? Students and teachers speak out about courses, stereotypes and parental views.
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FUTURE PERFECT? Which road should we take, students ask themselves. There are no simple answers. Photo: K.R. Deepak
Bringing up the rear of his class at the end of the sixth semester, Mathew Roy (name changed on request) doesn't regret choosing engineering, despite the fact that it wasn't his idea. "I wanted to get a bachelors degree in Business Administration or a B. Com," says this son of a businessman. "But my mother told me to take engineering, so I did. Within engineering I wanted to do mechanical but my father liked ECE, so I took it." Even with a backlog of six papers, Mathew feels happy that he is fulfilling his `parents' wish'.
Many parents insist that they give their children unlimited freedom when it comes to deciding what they want their life's work to be. Engineering or medicine: the decision is entirely left to them. This is where the tragedy lies. Breaking away from the given options is not an option. As a result, `professional' courses swallow up not only many potential artists, writers and musicians but also potential physicists, zoologists and economists.
Jayshree completed ECE in 1994, after great pressure from her parents. She had a flair for language and wanted to study literature. Nevertheless, she did reasonably well and went on to pursue an M.B.A and subsequently moved to the United States. But her heart has never really been in her chosen area of work. Now, spurred on by her parents, her sister is also studying to be an engineer.
Prof. C. Rathnasabapathy, principal of Velammal Engineering College, says he comes across such cases every day. A student with many innovative ideas in mechanical engineering ended up in IT because his father thought it was a better bet.
"Another student wanted to study electronics, communications and electrical engineering, not for any other reason, but because that was what both his sisters had done," says Prof. Rathnasabapathy. This sort of herd mentality is far too common. Not many students think for themselves and parental pressure forces many students to opt for engineering. Very few students have an innate urge to take a particular branch of engineering, he says. "Each student must be given the chance to realise his potential," he says. Parents must allow their children to develop passion for subjects they are inclined towards, and encourage them along that path."
But parents and community pressures aren't divorced from students' own estimation of their choices. Many students see engineering as the only `real' option.
"I wanted to come up in life, for which I thought doing a professional course was important: I wanted my B. Tech.," says Jeffreena Miranda. She believes engineers have immense earning potential, a factor she considered seriously when deciding what to do. Similarly, engineering aspirant, Christabel Pratibha can't wait to be called an `engineer'. She is convinced that no ordinary degree course has the same respectability as engineering.
According to her, the only reason students choose the science group is to get into professional courses. ``The students who don't get into professional colleges go for pure sciences," she says. Those interested in pure sciences go abroad to study if they can afford it.
Within engineering, electronics and communications engineering (ECE) is platinum and computer science is pure gold among gold, according to Calvin H., now a student of engineering at one of the Indian Institutes of Technology.
"Engineering was where the smart guys were headed," he recalls. "I had to get in, there was no other route." He made it in the second attempt and although he says his parents did not compel him, they also believed that engineering was the only truly professional course when pursued in a reputed institution in India. "The grounding in degree courses available here is not very good. Until they improve these courses and make them tougher to enter, students will continue to flock to engineering courses goaded by their parents," he says.
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Karnataka
Chennai
Coimbatore
Hyderabad
Madurai
Tiruchirapalli
Vijayawada
Visakhapatnam
