I worked for a brief while in a college in Delhi, and among my more uncomfortable memories is a language exercise, I gave a group of eight undergraduates: I asked them to imagine that they had already graduated and wanted them to write an application for a suitable job. Seven of the eight students wrote applications for the jobs of clerks. Even in one of the good universities, and in a college that had a reputation for its academic standards, the system had snuffed out all youthful ambition. Even the highest youthful ambition in the prestigious colleges is to pass the competitive examination for appointments in the administrative services, and there are colleges that are more proud of the bureaucrats among their alumni than of any scholars, scientists or leaders of opinion. And these latter, understandably, are a small number. Students derive the meanness of their ambitions from the meanness of the goals that the colleges propose to themselves. And of the most ambitious, as well as of the least, among the students, it could be said that they think more of what society will do to or for them, than of what they would be able to do for and to society. This is an excellent apprenticeship for joining the ranks of hirelings or of the unemployed. Fill in the blank with the correct option: Another word for ""snuffed out"" is