The program I am a part of is affiliated with the University of Minnesota, therefore the program is an American styled one as opposed to an Indian styled one. Still culture plays a part in the ways teachers interact with the class and/or wish to interact with the class. For example, many of the professors so not understand the testing and grading system that they are expected to teach in through the Indian system of education. Testing students is one thing that teachers here seem a little uncomfortable with. Instead, professors would prefer to have a lot of work assigned basing the grades on performance in work and effort in class. Writing and grading tests is something professors are unsure of. My classes are made up of 12 other American students studying at a center as opposed to an established University in the country. The costs are the same costs as the home school tuition. Most students, except the one other student with me from Allegheny, the students come from lower costing public Universities. Universities in India are much cheaper than US colleges however averaging around 1,000 USD (of course this is a lot of money for most Indians). The University system is very similar in India where the students go into the school and pick a major, so careers are not picked out long before a student enters school. However, many schools are very specialized in India as opposed to the US (for example engineering colleges, medical colleges, IT colleges, etc.) while US schools tend to be liberal arts focused. Medicine and engineering are the most popular majors in India. Engineers do not have the best job prospects because there are more engineers than engineering jobs… the same goes for IT. However, the Indian economy is booming and more jobs are opening up greatly. There is a weak number of doctors since most doctors come to the US if they can afford it. Therefore, practicing medicine or working in a hospital is much easier to go to in India. My host site does not have athletics, however all activities provided are co-curricular given that it is a US program. Many people in India do dream of studying primarily in the US, though most people cannot afford it. They want to because many, reasonably, perceive the US as having a much more superior education.Because the education is US styled there is no real difference between Allegheny and MSID academic style and expectations leading me not to take away any major differences from this experience.
I found your blog post to be interesting since I am studying in France, and the university system here is so similar to the system in the U.S. I thought it was interesting that your professors do not seem to grade assignments like they do in the United States, as many of my French courses are graded on a scale similar to the one I am used to from Allegheny.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Beth I think what you take away from the Indian school system about the teachers if very interesting. I know that in my French school grades are enormously based on class participation, homework, presentations and exams. I can remember that in the French middle school system grades were enormously based off of one or two exams per semester and then class participation. I think it would be interesting to see how Indian middle school work.
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