Teachers want IIT-JEE to stay
- Open to national tech entrance test if it is followed by own exam BASANT KUMAR MOHANTY
New Delhi, April 29: IIT faculties
have demanded that the institutes be allowed to continue with their
separate entrance exam, the IIT-JEE, a stand that could make it
difficult for the government to replace it with a combined entrance test
for all centrally funded tech schools.
The faculties are
also against any dilution of the IIT-JEE’s importance through weightage
given to board marks during selection of students for admission. (See
chart)
The Union human
resource development (HRD) ministry had proposed scrapping the IIT-JEE
in favour of a combined national entrance test, and giving 40 per cent
weightage to the candidates’ board exam marks during selection.
However, faced
with opposition from the IIT faculties, the ministry decided to allow
the matter to be debated at the institutes before a final decision was
taken in June.
First, the issue
was to be discussed at each of the seven older IITs’ faculty
association, then at each IIT’s senate and then at the IIT Council.
The senate of IIT
Kanpur and the faculty associations in Delhi, Mumbai and Kharagpur have
met over the past two weeks and decided that the IIT-JEE should continue
in its present form in 2013.
They are ready to
accept the combined national entrance test from 2014 (Kharagpur wants it
a few years later), but insist that it should be followed by the
IIT-JEE in a two-tier exam system.
This IIT-JEE
should be an advanced subjective-type exam rather than an objective-type
one as it is now. Through it, the premier tech schools will select
their students from among those who qualify in the proposed combined
test.
As for the 40 per
cent weightage to board marks, the IIT faculties have said that board
scores should only be used to set an eligibility cut-off for the JEE:
admission should be based solely on the students’ scores in the entrance
test.
A member of IIT
Delhi’s faculty forum, whose executive body met this week, explained how
the two-tier exam system would work.
“Since the IITs
together have nearly 11,000 seats, the top 55,000 qualifiers in the
combined national entrance test will be allowed to appear in the
IIT-JEE,” he said.
“To ensure that
the students do not neglect their board exam, their board performance
will be an eligibility criterion for appearance in the IIT-JEE.”
The IIT Kanpur
senate, made up by the institute’s professors, and the IIT Bombay
faculty association have taken the same decisions. The general body of
IIT Kharagpur’s faculty association met last Thursday and decided the
IIT-JEE should continue in its current form for the next few years.
“Our faculty
association is not in favour of taking students through the proposed
national (combined) test for at least two or three years. We want the
IITs to examine the effectiveness of the proposed national test and
later take a decision.
Till that time, the IIT-JEE should continue,” a
faculty association member said.
The HRD ministry
had set up two committees — one headed by IIT Kharagpur director Damodar
Acharya and another by science and technology secretary T. Ramasami —
to suggest reforms of the IIT-JEE. Both committees suggested the
introduction of 40 per cent weightage to Class XII board marks apart
from holding a test in mathematics, physics and chemistry.
The ministry then
proposed a single national-level test from 2013, replacing the IIT-JEE
and the All India Engineering Entrance Examination (AIEEE), for
admission to about 100 centrally-funded tech schools, including the
IITs, National Institutes of Technology (NITs) and the Indian Institutes
of Information Technology (IIITs). Scores in that exam were to carry 60
per cent weightage.
IIT faculties,
however, differed and met HRD minister Kapil Sibal earlier this month.
Sibal then said the proposal for the combined national test had to be
debated at the senates of all the IITs.
The ministry will
next month hold a meeting of the IIT Council, the institutes’ apex
decision-making body, where the views of all the senates will be
considered. The final decision will be taken by the Central Advisory
Board of Education, the apex advisory body on education.
