“ a compromise formula which includes a proposal to take top 20% students based on percentile ranking of respective boards for preparing the merit list”

How meaningless is this solution ?. Higher education in India will become the domain of the school toppers and Children of affluent parents and we wonder why half a million students leave India to study undergraduate courses overseas. Children who will never return to a country that shunned them.

Is this is what we call inclusive in RTE ?.

God Save India

Inclusive education does not mean that everyone must enter, or pass out from, an IIT. It only means that if you wanted to, you could have a shot at it. The child labourer is excluded because she can never dream of entering an IIT; she may absolutely hate IIT, but not trying to join an IIT should be her decision. Even if there is only one IIT train, every child must have access to the platform where the train comes. Of course, not everyone will get on to the train but everyone knows what to do to have a shot at the train. This is called inclusion in education. Everyone must go to school till class 12; those who work hard, and are willing to work harder still, will join an IIT. Others will, by choice, decide not to work that hard and become economists.

Shubhashis Gangopadhyay


All children are born equal and mindless politicians are trying to grade the children and youth of the nation and create a new Brahamanical Caste system in Education, which is pandering to the neo rich who can afford to send their children to elite private schools and Coaching schools.

"HRD Ministry of India wants to build castles of higher education on the bamboo scaffoldings of its schools" ~ Satish Jha

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Monday, June 4, 2012

189 - The JEE is Saved, Long Live the JEE Brand!


Oh! Indian Intellectualism

Thursday, 31 May 2012
The JEE is Saved, Long Live the JEE Brand!

Today's news is full of reports of IITs and their alumni contemplating legal action against the government to stop the changes announced to the JEE.

Time to step back and analyze the situation..

First, the JEE is no doubt a world brand, a Kohinoor in the crown of Independent India, it needs to be saved, AND polished to perfect gleam.

At the same time, there have been several problems with multiple entrance exams in the country, so the IITs and the JEE need to do their bit to help solve the problem, without forgoing their glory and merit.

The coaching labor camps of Kota, Hyderabad, etc. are a blot on the JEE. One would wish that the JEE-question-setters would by now have addressed this problem via innovative question setting, innovative administering of the JEE, etc, but that has not happened. On the other hand, the JEE has been beset by a few accusations of poor cutoff-marks setting, etc, including court cases on the issue. In fact, one of the IIT faculty has been blogging about these issues: JEE 2011 Admits Errors in Question paper.

Time for JEE to revamp and refurbish itself a bit to get back to its old glory!

In this context, let us analyze the new common entrance exam:

1. From the IIT perspective, there is a pre-screening part which is comprised of scores on the JEE-Main and the State Board exams. Nothing wrong with this: the JEE itself had a screening part a few years back, and, second, anyone who prepares for the JEE will effortlessly score a minimum percentile in the state boards. Plus, the selection percentile for the screening part is to be set by the ISI Calcutta, so there is further control available there for fine tuning. Also, the IITs plan to screen-in 50,000 students to JEE-Advanced, to select just a few thousand there. Anyone who can make it to the top 10,000 in JEE-Advanced is not going to fail to make it to the top 50,000 of the screening part just because of marks in the State Board exams, especially when the latter contributes only 50% to the screening marks.

2. The JEE-Advanced is the real JEE, as it is today. The current change is that JEE-Advanced is proposed to be just a half-day affair. Now, the IITs can certainly ask for leeway here to make JEE-Advanced a two-day affair, if they so desire. Thanks to the pre-screening, they can have non-objective-type questions in JEE-Advanced to tackle the gamers from Kota & Hyderabad.

So, why are the IIT faculty and alumni upset?! They still have their JEE, they just need to fine-tune it. Plus, they also have a broader responsibility to the country, so if the current solution lets them have their JEE while also helping address the larger problem of multiple entrance exams in the country, they should be eager to help the country, thereby also scoring brownie points.

What the IIT faculty and alumni SHOULD BE upset about is calling the screening part "JEE-Main". THAT destroys a brand name that has taken about half a century to establish. And, it is ludicrous to call a part the Main part when all it is doing is screening people out for the IITs. So, they should fight for changing the name JEE-Main to AIEEE (which is what it is), and changing the JEE-Advanced name back to JEE.

May the energies be channeled towards the right causes!

Posted by GnaanaMaargi at 09:44
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1 comments:

  • Rabindranath2 June 2012 04:27
    Your point about "Anyone who can make it to the top 10,000 in JEE-Advanced is not going to fail to make it to the top 50,000 of the screening part just because of marks in the State Board exams, especially when the latter contributes only 50% to the screening marks." This is a facile argument as it is very well recognised that many JEE toppers do well but are not necessarily at the top of the heap. The skills and capabilities required to do well in the CBSE are hardly adequate to do well in the JEE.

    Second, why are so many people joining the coaching institutions or labour camps as you are calling them? It's because the schools simply do not equip them with the depth of concepts and problem solving skills. Coaching institutes provide these, so what's wrong with labouring? The ones who are labouring aren't complaining so why's the HRD ministry trying to improve their lot?

    Your article simply does not stand up to scrutiny with the facts.
    Reply
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