Jun 11, 2012
Kapil Sibal’s human resource development ministry had proposed holding a common entrance test from 2013 for all undergraduate engineering courses in the country, including those at IITs, with the best of intentions.
But the common IIT-JEE exam, which was to have been held in two segments on the same day next year, has hit a serious roadblock that may have severe repercussions for the student community. Having seen several IITs swing into battle against the JEE, IIT Kharagpur on Sunday came out with a strongly-worded statement spelling out how IITs have become elite institutions “because they were allowed to function independently and set standards in carrying out academic responsibilities”.
While it is arguable whether the common test will be a retrograde step, as claimed, the fact remains that it has opened the floodgates to a turf war between so-called elitist academic institutions and the rest. It is now an ego battle between institutes that see sinister designs behind the move and the HRD ministry that had hoped to bring some order to a complicated academic world of multiple entrance exams, in which students were severely tested in terms of their nervous energy.
The process of holding a two-tier test — main and advanced — was meant to address the need for a subjective test, besides giving weightage to scholastic work that pupils put in all through their school years up to the Plus-2 examination.
Students would have been rewarded for sustained academic work at school rather than staking everything in a roll of the dice in one entrance test. It is vital that the HRD minister does not give up this fight easily. It is up to Mr Sibal, who worked patiently for two years to find a level of consensus among academics before introducing the common test, to attempt an all-inclusive dialogue again by bringing together all dons with their various shades of opinion. At stake are the careers of a huge chunk of students who aspire to get into the nation’s best technical institutes. Also at stake is the economy of the burgeoning coaching school sector that thrives on preparing students for elitist IITs, but whose well-being should not come at the cost of the sanctity of public exams being sacrificed at the altar of commercial convenience.
It’s not too late to give final shape to the common IIT-JEE, perhaps by reducing the weightage for school marks, allowing the IITs to frame the “advanced” test paper and holding out assurances on the autonomy of the IITs’ academic system while at the same time serving the interests of the vast student community. The need of the hour is to remove the terrible uncertainty surrounding the 2013 academic year.
