I saw the latest Bollywood blockbuster 3 Idiots (Warning! Link contains plot spoilers) yesterday night.  The movie lived up to expectations.  People who grew up in India (or for that matter Asia) can relate to the underlying theme of the movie that education should be a means for the propagation of knowledge and the ability to think and use such knowledge, rather than rote learning.   The other theme of the movie, encouraging the pursuit of career dreams is also familiar.

Ever since the British created a western style education system in India, education has been a means to financial security rather than the pursuit of knowledge.  Whole generations of Indians actively sought out the then prevailing career option of the day (law, engineering, computers, etc.) and put their extra-curricular interests on hold.  While this was extremely logical in a country where job opportunities were few and far between, one cannot help but imagine the deep cultural loss caused the mindless automation of millions of young Indians.

One of the benefits of economic liberalization in India, is that alternative career options (based on the non-scientific observations of this blogger) seem far more common.  This is a welcome development.

However, this is a delicate balance to strike.  While the Indian education system sometimes focuses too much on careers and sucks the creativity out of its students, the United States sometimes seems all the way on the other side of the spectrum.  Excessive school choice in course curriculum often results high school graduates with poor grounding in science and math.  College academia in the United States can sometimes veer too far into encouraging students to discover themselves (a luxury many cannot afford) while leaving them woefully unprepared for careers.

Legal academia is a fine example of this.  Law professors haughtily proclaim that they teach at a “law school” and not “lawyer school.”   The result of 3 years of education (now costing about $150,000) are newly minted attorneys who cannot draft a contract or a brief without extensive hand-holding.

The latest recession has forced some colleges to evaluate whether they should modify their curriculum to add courses that they would have deemed more worthy of a trade school.  With college no longer the preserve of the idle rich and the costs rising obscenely, it is hard to see how the transition can be staved off much longer.

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