512 - Admission policy unchanged as IITs reject govt proposal - DNA

Admission policy unchanged as IITs reject govt proposal

Monday, Aug 26, 2013, 7:58 IST | Place: New Delhi | Agency: DNA

Ritika Chopra  

The Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) have shot down the government’s proposal to consider changes in the admission rules for next year.

On Sunday, the country’s premier engineering schools, at a meeting of its Joint Admissions Board (JAB) — the top admissions body of the IITs — decided that they will not entertain any proposal for change in the top-20-percentile eligibility criterion for the moment. In other words, the admission norms and the paper pattern of JEE – Advance will remain the same next year.

As per the percentile criterion, which was introduced just this year, an aspirant can be eligible for admission to an IIT if one, in addition to having qualified JEE-Advance, is among the top 20 percentile candidates of one’s respective school board results.

HRD ministry’s suggestion for a review of this criterion came at a meeting called by HRD minister MM Pallam Raju in the second week of August after 79 aspirants were denied admission to the IITs despite getting initial offer as they did not meet the percentile cut-off marks of their respective schools boards.
Many of such aggrieved students were from Andhra Pradesh, who had cleared the entrance test but missed the 92% cut-off marks of Andhra Boards results by just one per cent.

The government’s proposal suggested that the top-20-percentile criterion could carry a rider from next year that a candidate who has cleared JEE-Advance will be eligible for admission if he/she is either in the top 20 percentile of the Class XII board examination or has secured at least 80% in the Boards exams, which ever is lower.

But the IITs, which have always been skeptical of government intervention and protective of their autonomy, have shot down the idea. “Officials and directors felt that we can’t decide to change an admission criterion without proper analysis. If some (school) boards are very liberal in marking their students, then what can we do?,”said a senior IIT official, who was present during the JAB meeting, referring to southern state boards where students tend to score very high marks. “We must complete at least two admission cycles before considering any changes,” he added.

511 - More seats = dilution?

More seats = dilution?

While there have been many statements about the dilution of the brand value of the coveted Indian Institutes of Technology due to increase in number, on the other hand the country needs more such institutions to elevate India’s higher education situation. Where can one find the balance?

Choose the correct option:  

1. If we have something that’s really nice, we should make some more, so that everyone has a chance to get that nice thing. 

2. If we have something that’s really nice, we should not have more of it, since the more you will have, the lesser will be the value. 

Confused?

Well, in this case, the ‘nice thing’ we are talking about is education at the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs). Since the initial five institutes were not sufficient to provide great education to the burgeoning population, many more were set up, so that a higher number of students would have the opportunity to get an education at the coveted IITs. Since then, all the new institutes have been offered is flak.

The latest comment comes from Anand Kumar, director of the famous Patna-based Super 30 programme, which offers free coaching to 30 economically disadvantaged students to crack the IIT entrance exams. According to him, the IITs are losing brand value with the continued increase in number of institutes and seats. Well, one must think that Kumar has a point, since the success of his venture can be estimated by the information that all of his students got selected to IIT programmes consecutively from 2008 to 2011.

While IITians like Mohit Goel, who runs the famous Yukti Education Services for training for the IIT entrance opine that there is such a phase of preferential treatment towards the existing IITs, it is a temporary one, and the degree will still be sought after. “The situation is such that it creates a sort of hierarchy among the IITs itself. 

Aspirants prefer the five existing institutes to the new ones. Once Guwahati and Roorkee started doing well, they joined the ranks of the older institutes and the new ones are the ‘less preferred ones. The rankings of the established ones are always very high and it will be a Herculean task for the new ones to catch up quickly,” he says. Goel adds that “once an IITian, always an IITian, so there is no question of losing brand value!

IIT aspirant Neeraj Bhagat is of the opinion that if any great organisation fears dilution of brand value, there would be no branches set up! Among educational institutions, he cites the examples of INSEAD, a world renowned management institute, which started with a campus in France, but now has campuses in Singapore and Abu Dhabi. “Why shouldn’t the government think of the aspirations of the increasing student population and cater to the needs by setting up new campuses? It gives a student a better chance to score a seat to a good education,” he says.

Considering the admission ratios, there is no way that any of the IITs will see a shortage of applicants. It is just a matter of time that the new institutes catch up. Says IITian Kedar Shiroor “This gives many more smart people the opportunity to graduate from an IIT. With the market growing by the day and brain drain becoming less of an issue, more IITs will help improve the quality of education.” He leaves us with a bit of food for thought: “With our growing population, why have only a few premier engineering schools for the worry of losing brand value?”

510 - IIT JEE success skewed in favour of urban, high-income students

IIT JEE success skewed in favour of urban, high-income students

Mihika Basu : Mumbai, Thu Aug 08 2013, 04:21 hrs

Studetns from urban areas, higher-income families and those with access to coaching enjoyed significantly greater success in the 2012 joint entrance examination (JEE) for IITs, reveals a detailed internal analysis by the institutes.

The candidates who registered for JEE, as well as those who qualified, were concentrated in a few big cities. In fact, more than half the candidates who qualified came from just 11 cities. Of the 5,06,484 students registered for JEE in 2012, 24,112 qualified.

Among qualified candidates in all categories, the success rate (compared to the total who registered) was 5.8 per cent for city students, 4.2 per cent for those from towns and 2.7 per cent for those from villages. An analysis of the success ratio of those who took admission shows city students at 3.99 per cent, followed by 2.31 per cent from towns and a meagre 1.27 per cent from villages.

If general category alone were considered, the figures for those offered admission were 61 per cent for cities, 27 per cent for towns and 12 per cent for villages. "Overall, city candidates did better as against 51 per cent (of the) registration they could get 61 per cent of the total admission offers," the internal report by the IITs says.

In income levels, those falling in the highest income slab, or over Rs 4.5 lakh a year, showed the highest success ratio at 10.3 per cent, all categories considered. This fell progressively with income. Students in the middle income age group — Rs 1 lakh to Rs 4.5 lakh — had a success ratio of 4.8 per cent and those from families earning less than Rs 1 lakh had a success ratio of a meagre 2.6 per cent. That, however, can be explained to some extent by the fact that almost 85 per cent of those who registered belonged to the middle and lower income categories.

In fact, among all the categories, general category candidates from the highest income group had the highest success rate. While 81.49 per cent of this category students, with parental income above Rs 4.5 lakh, qualified JEE last year, 38.01 per cent with parental income less than Rs 1 lakh qualified.

Incidentally, parents' occupation too appeared to have had an impact on a candidate's performance. "Candidates whose parents are in medical and engineering professions performed slightly better than other candidates. Candidates whose parents are in agriculture or in defence services have not been able to perform as well as the others," the report says.

One in five registered students took extra help, most probably some sort of coaching, says the report, but they made up about half of the successful candidates. "More than two-fold increase in their success rate over other students, who only did self-study, is a clear indication of the effect of extra help (probably professional coaching). Further analysis also supports this assertion. While self-study students can hold their own in zones like Bombay and Madras and to a slightly lesser extent in Delhi, they could not perform well in Guwahati, Kanpur, Roorkee and Kharagpur zones. It hints at availability of better conditions of self-study in Bombay, Madras and Delhi zones," the report says.

The much-debated new JEE Main and JEE Advanced tests were aimed at reducing multiplicity of entrance tests and restricting coaching centres' hold on the system.

The trend is similar across various categories. In the IITs, 27 per cent seats are reserved for Other Backward Classes (OBCs, non-creamy layer), 15 per cent for Scheduled Castes (SCs) and 7.5 per cent for Scheduled Tribes (STs).

If 35.24 per cent and 11.43 per cent of the OBC candidates from cities and towns respectively got admission in IITs last year, a meagre 3.07 per cent who did so came from villages. Even among SC candidates, the figures tilt towards those from urban areas — 12.96 per cent from cities and 9.66 per cent from towns got admission as compared to 5 per cent from villages.

Among ST candidates, only 2.59 per cent from villages managed to get into the IITs, as compared to 8.43 per cent from cities and 4.04 per cent from towns.

Among boards, general candidates seemed to prefer CBSE. About two-third of all registrations and three-fourth of qualified candidates studied CBSE. "OBCs on the other hand seem to prefer state boards as they make up more than one-third of registered as well as qualified candidates from the state boards. The respective numbers for them in CBSE drops to about one-fifth. SC and STs do not show any major change in shares in both the boards," the report says.

Among income slabs, the difference is not so significant when it comes to SC candidates — 11.35 per cent students with parental income above Rs 4.5 lakh qualified as compared to 17.56 per cent with parental income less than Rs 1 lakh.

Among OBC category candidates from the non-creamy layer (NCL), there is a deviation from the general trend. Around 4.64 per cent candidates with parental income above Rs 4.5 lakh, 22.97 per cent with parental income between Rs 1 lakh and Rs 4.5 lakh, and 38.01 per cent with income below Rs 1 lakh qualified the test.

"The proportion of OBC (NCL) candidates, whose parental income is below 1 lakh, relative to those with income between 1 and 4.5 lakh, is disproportionately high compared to all the other categories," the report says.