Indian-Born Employees in Silicon Valley: A Question of Technical Skills or Cultural Assumptions
Abstract/Contents
- Abstract
- In the last decade, the software and technology industry in the US has exploded. The rapid expansion has caused the US to turn to other countries such as India to meet the supply shortages of skilled talent required by the industry. This study will take a closer look at the role that India’s higher education system has played and is playing in the growth of Indian-born immigrants qualifying for work in the US. More specifically, this study is designed to investigate the relative degrees to which the US and Indian higher education systems similarly or dissimilarly prepare Indian-born graduates for Information Technology (IT) employment in the US, as measured through the expectations, assessment, and level of satisfaction of employers and employees in the Silicon Valley. The argument here is that employers and employees still prefer some degree of education in the US but that the perceived value of India’s higher education is changing. The data to support the study was collected through surveys and interviews of employers and employees in Silicon Valley. The data indicate that in terms of employees’ perceptions of their preparedness and that of their employers, the systems seem to be comparable in preparing the employees technically. Nonetheless, employers and employees believe that a US education is advantageous in preparing Indian-born employees for IT employment in the Silicon Valley. India’s higher education system is seen as a valid source as a filter but not by itself. As the data will show, it is not possible to assess whether the perceived value of India’s higher education system is changing in terms of actually imparting better skills in employees for work in the Silicon Valley, or whether other factors such as work experience, the establishment of a domestic Indian software industry, and cultural assumptions are contributing to this perception.
Description
| Type of resource | text |
|---|---|
| Date created | August 2000 |
Creators/Contributors
| Author | Karachiwala, Sandhya |
|---|
Subjects
| Subject | India’s higher education system |
|---|---|
| Subject | information technology |
| Subject | Silicon Valley |
| Subject | Stanford Graduate School of Education International Educational Administration and Policy Analysis |
| Genre | Thesis |
Bibliographic information
| Related item | |
|---|---|
| Location | https://purl.stanford.edu/yd845wr7438 |
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- This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial 3.0 Unported license (CC BY-NC).
Collection
Graduate School of Education International Comparative Education Master's Monographs
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- ssabhnani@gmail.com
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