One-test relief plan for NITs - Meet to decide if board marks weightage for IITs will stay
BASANT KUMAR MOHANTY
New Delhi, June 25: Students seeking admission to centrally funded tech schools other than the IITs will have to take just one entrance test rather than two if a meeting chaired by Kapil Sibal on Wednesday accepts the proposal.
The idea is part of a set of suggestions before the IIT Council, headed by the human resource development minister, that seeks to resolve the dispute over purported admission reforms that have been opposed by IIT faculty.
The key proposal is to scrap the planned weightage to candidates’ Class XII board marks in IIT admission — the sticking point with the faculty. (See chart)
Another suggestion is that students vying for seats in the National Institutes of Technology (NITs) or the Indian Institutes of Information Technology (IIITs) but not the IITs be made to take only the JEE Main.
Under the proposal, only IIT aspirants would have to take both the JEE Main and the JEE Advanced.
If approved, the move will bring relief to at least seven lakh students. Some five lakh students now take the IIT-JEE while 12 lakh appear in the All India Engineering Entrance Examination for the 15,000 seats in all the other centrally funded tech schools, which include 30 NITs, four IIITs and a few other institutes.
From next year, Sibal’s ministry plans to merge the two exams into a combined JEE for admission to all centrally funded technical institutes. The new JEE is to have two parts: Main and Advanced.
Under the originally mooted reforms, decided by the IIT Council on May 28, all candidates were to take both exams. The change, if carried out, will please the IIT faculty a section of which was against making both rounds of the exam mandatory for those not seeking IIT seats.
Under the May 28 reforms, both the Main and the Advanced were to be held on the same day, which the faculty argued would be too stressful for the students. On Wednesday, the IIT Council will consider letting the IITs hold the JEE Advanced on a later date of their choosing.
The government will ask the IITs to align the JEE Advanced syllabus with that of the JEE Main so that the tougher second-round exam can in the long run be done away with. Just as the IIT-JEE is tougher than the All India Engineering Entrance Examination now, so the Advanced will be more difficult than the Main.
Deemed varsities
Sibal’s ministry today met the vice-chancellors of deemed universities and asked them to adopt the JEE Main for admission to their engineering courses.
“All the deemed universities have agreed in principle to adopt the pattern of the JEE Main and give weightage to board marks in the admission process. They are free to decide their own weightage formula,” a ministry official said.
Since the process of giving weightage to candidates’ board marks depends on early publication of Class XII results, a meeting of all the school boards has been called on Thursday.
The Council of Boards of School Education, which coordinates with all the boards on matters of common interest, has called the meeting and will ask the boards to publish their results in quick time.
BASANT KUMAR MOHANTY
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Tuesday , June 26 , 2012 |
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New Delhi, June 25: Students seeking admission to centrally funded tech schools other than the IITs will have to take just one entrance test rather than two if a meeting chaired by Kapil Sibal on Wednesday accepts the proposal.
The idea is part of a set of suggestions before the IIT Council, headed by the human resource development minister, that seeks to resolve the dispute over purported admission reforms that have been opposed by IIT faculty.
The key proposal is to scrap the planned weightage to candidates’ Class XII board marks in IIT admission — the sticking point with the faculty. (See chart)
Another suggestion is that students vying for seats in the National Institutes of Technology (NITs) or the Indian Institutes of Information Technology (IIITs) but not the IITs be made to take only the JEE Main.
Under the proposal, only IIT aspirants would have to take both the JEE Main and the JEE Advanced.
If approved, the move will bring relief to at least seven lakh students. Some five lakh students now take the IIT-JEE while 12 lakh appear in the All India Engineering Entrance Examination for the 15,000 seats in all the other centrally funded tech schools, which include 30 NITs, four IIITs and a few other institutes.
From next year, Sibal’s ministry plans to merge the two exams into a combined JEE for admission to all centrally funded technical institutes. The new JEE is to have two parts: Main and Advanced.
Under the originally mooted reforms, decided by the IIT Council on May 28, all candidates were to take both exams. The change, if carried out, will please the IIT faculty a section of which was against making both rounds of the exam mandatory for those not seeking IIT seats.
Under the May 28 reforms, both the Main and the Advanced were to be held on the same day, which the faculty argued would be too stressful for the students. On Wednesday, the IIT Council will consider letting the IITs hold the JEE Advanced on a later date of their choosing.
The government will ask the IITs to align the JEE Advanced syllabus with that of the JEE Main so that the tougher second-round exam can in the long run be done away with. Just as the IIT-JEE is tougher than the All India Engineering Entrance Examination now, so the Advanced will be more difficult than the Main.
Deemed varsities
Sibal’s ministry today met the vice-chancellors of deemed universities and asked them to adopt the JEE Main for admission to their engineering courses.
“All the deemed universities have agreed in principle to adopt the pattern of the JEE Main and give weightage to board marks in the admission process. They are free to decide their own weightage formula,” a ministry official said.
Since the process of giving weightage to candidates’ board marks depends on early publication of Class XII results, a meeting of all the school boards has been called on Thursday.
The Council of Boards of School Education, which coordinates with all the boards on matters of common interest, has called the meeting and will ask the boards to publish their results in quick time.
