IIT faculty drill holes in one-test logic
G.S. MUDUR
New Delhi, June 10: India’s higher education czars
have relied on flawed assumptions and misleading rhetoric to propose the
new exam pattern for entrance into the Indian Institutes of Technology
and other engineering colleges, senior IIT faculty members have said.
The faculty
members from IIT Bombay, Kanpur and Delhi have also warned that the
proposed exam pattern will intensify stress among students and expand
the market for coaching, thus accentuating the very problems it is
intended to curb.
The IIT Council,
chaired by the Union human resource development minister Kapil Sibal,
decided last month to introduce a two-step exam — main and advanced,
both to be held on the same day — and factor in the Class XII board
scores for entrance into the IITs and other central engineering
colleges. The Council, whose members include IIT directors, said the new
pattern in which board scores will get 50 per cent weightage with the
main exam, should begin from 2013, replacing the existing IIT Joint
Entrance Exam.
“The proposal may
be well-intentioned, but it appears thoughtlessly prepared,” said
Dheeraj Sanghi, professor of computer science and dean of academic
affairs at IIT Kanpur, whose senate — a body of senior faculty — has
rejected the idea and said it will conduct its own entrance exam in 2013
.
Sanghi and others
believe the manner in which the new screening pattern plans to factor in
Class XII scores is scientifically untenable. They say it will hurt
students from some boards for no fault of theirs, while providing an
unfair advantage to students of other boards.
The IIT Council has proposed a
mathematical trick for “normalisation” which, in principle, would allow
students from India’s diverse school boards and examination systems to
be assigned an all-India rank and score, to be used for the 50 per cent
weightage.
But the normalisation trick is
based on two key assumptions — that merit distribution is the same in
all boards, and that aggregate scores increase from less meritorious to
the more meritorious students.
“Merit
distribution is something difficult to measure — what is measured is
academic preparedness, and there is ample evidence that academic
preparedness varies across different boards,” said Somenath Biswas, a
computer science professor at IIT Kanpur. “The first assumption is thus
incorrect, and variability in grading of exam papers within and across
boards may invalidate the second assumption,” Biswas told The
Telegraph.
The proposal's
proponents have said the new screening pattern, recommended by a panel
chaired by science and technology secretary T. Ramasami, will reduce the
stress of multiple exams on students and curb the emphasis on coaching
classes.
The proponents
also believe factoring in the normalised board marks will emphasise the
importance of doing well in boards, particularly to good students, who
might otherwise be tempted to settle for lower rank in boards in quest
of their IIT aspirations.
Many IIT faculty
members believe the single make-or-break exam will intensify stress.
“Multiple exams
reduce stress by providing multiple opportunities,” said Anurag Mehra,
professor of chemical engineering at IIT Bombay. “Many students feel
multiple exams actually provide them the safety of revisiting their
performance and the possibility of getting something,” he has said in a
commentary to appear shortly in the journal Current Science, a
publication of the Indian Academy of Science.
Mehra and others
say the new pattern will stimulate the demand for coaching classes.
“It will encourage
the proliferation of coaching classes that claim to help students learn
to crack the two exams as well as score high marks in boards,” said
Deepak Gupta, professor of materials science and engineering at IIT
Kanpur.
While the plan’s
proponents say it will encourage greater focus on school board exams,
critics point out that there is no evidence for this. On the contrary,
they say, the two-step exam pattern will compel hundreds of thousands of
students across the country to take a gruelling, tough exam they would
otherwise have not.
Under the plan,
the first step —the main exam — will be roughly equivalent to the
current All India Engineering Entrance Exam, while the second step —
advanced exam — is intended to resemble the much tougher IIT Joint
Entrance Exam.
About 1.2 million
students took the AIEEE this year and 500,000 took the IIT-JEE. “Given
these numbers, the new pattern will force the 700,000 students who would
not have taken the JEE to sit for the advanced exam,” Gupta said.
“Imagine the
enormous burden on students — to take an AIEEE-type exam in the morning
and an IIT-JEE type exam in the afternoon,” said a senior faculty member
at the IIT Bombay. “I’ve taken these exams myself — I can’t imagine the
stress of doing this same day.”
Several IIT
faculty members say proponents of the new exam plan have used misleading
rhetoric to draw support. “There is a wrong impression created that the
IIT-JEE is primarily responsible for pushing students towards
coaching,” said an IIT Bombay faculty member.
A study published
in the Journal of Indian Education two years ago revealed that
three out of four students in a set of Delhi schools enrolled in science
streams were taking private tuitions or attending coaching classes. A
non-government organisation pointed out earlier this year that even
primary school students in many states seek coaching or private
tuitions.
A note circulated
by one of the IIT directors justifying the need for incorporating board
scores claimed that the emphasis on JEE and coaching has led to “the
ridiculous situation where students are entering the IIT system without
learning, say calculus.”
Calculus, a topic
in mathematics, is taught in Class XI and Class XII, and, one IIT Bombay
faculty member said, it is “utter rubbish” to suggest that a student
could enter the IITs without learning calculus.
“I was trying to
use rhetoric,” the director who circulated the note told The Telegraph.
“What I meant to say was that students could ignore calculus, and
concentrate on other topics and subjects and get through the
examination.”
The Delhi-based
IIT Faculty Federation today said it was “shocked” to learn that IIT
Kharagpur director Damodar Acharya had issued misleading public
statements that his institution’s senate backed the proposal for the new
exam pattern.
“The resolutions
of the IIT Kharagpur senate did not recommend the inclusion of the board
marks,” the federation said, adding that the senate had categorically
stated that no change should be introduced until 2014.
