507 - JEE changes made in a hurry: IITs - Business Standard

Kalpana Pathak & M Saraswathy  |  Mumbai  July 17, 2013 Last Updated at 21:50 IST

JEE changes made in a hurry: IITs

IIT alumni association to protest demanding restoration of the original examination system

The Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD) is yet to decide on reviewing the changes in the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) joint entrance examination (JEE), but the IITs have given their verdict - the changes have been brought about in a hurry and have complicated the examination.

"We had been, since the beginning, suggesting this new pattern should be implemented from 2014, but to no avail. Though incorporating board marks for admission to IITs is a good move, the new format was implemented in a hurry, without much thought," said Gautam Barua, director, IIT-Guwahati.

"The new IIT JEE has complicated the entire admission process," said Devang Khakhar, director, IIT-Bombay.

Last year, then MHRD minister Kapil Sibal had cleared the proposal to hold the JEE in two parts-main and advanced. Students applying to the IITs have to appear for JEE-main. Of these students, only the top 1,50,000 are eligible for JEE-advanced. For final admission to the 16 IITs, based on JEE-advanced, a student has to be among the top 20 percentile in his respective standard-XII board.

While the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) conducts JEE-main, JEE-advanced is conducted by IIT-Delhi.

Coaching institutes have said the new process of normalisation has made it difficult for deserving students to qualify. The director of a Kota-based coaching institute said, "If a student from Tripura who secured 58 per cent marks in board exams is selected, while one from Andhra Pradesh with 80 per cent isn't, there could be flaws in the system."

"We need to discuss with Indian Statistical Institute (which had prepared the formula for normalisation) experts how real is the issue and whether it a problem on a larger scale. Only after such an analysis can any change be proposed in the process," said a senior IIT official.

Meanwhile, members of the IIT alumni associations are set to go on an agitation later this month to protest against the new system. Somnath Bharti, ex-president of IIT-Delhi Alumni Association and a Supreme Court lawyer, said the matter was sub judice. "We are looking at engaging directly with ministry officials on this issue. It is very unfortunate that these issues have cropped up," he said.

MHRD officials said the Andhra Pradesh government had taken up the issue in a high court.


'State boards interpreted 20% rule differently'
At a meeting between Human Resource Development Minister Pallam Raju and IIT officials on Wednesday, it was said in the case of the new JEE norms, while the IITs had meant the 20 percentile rule was applicable for students clearing JEE-advanced, state boards had taken it as applicable to 20 per cent of the students appearing for JEE-main.

"The method of calculation of the top 20 percentile had been clearly stated by us from day one. Therefore, we presented this to the minister…we wouldn't make any change to it. However, state boards used a different formula for normalisation and this resulted in the confusion," said a senior IIT official who attended the meeting. It was also decided IITs would draw up a list of students affected by the new rule and hold another meeting to address the issue.

WHAT IS NORMALISATION?

Normalisation, as used in the Indian context, is a process for ensuring students are neither advantaged nor disadvantaged by the difficulty of exams they do for the Boards. This process is used in other countries with similar issues as in India

Normalisation process requires one to know the following

Percentile score: Percentile score of a candidate in a Board or JEE (Main) will reflect what percentage of candidates have scored below that candidate in that Board or JEE (Main) Examination

A percentile score is the value of below which a certain per cent of observations fall. For example, the 20th percentile is the value (or score) below which 20 per cent of the observations may be found

Example: Suppose we have 13,711 candidates in a Board, and a candidate who's score is 60% of Board marks has 6,865 candidates below him; his percentile score will be calculated as follows

Percentile score for 60% of Board marks: 6,865/13,711 x 100

409 - The percentile way to ruin the IITs by Sandipan Deb - Live Mint

The percentile way to ruin the IITs

The obsession with class XII marks is unhealthy. Their utility in assessing candidates’ merit for IITs is doubtful

The Sceptic | Sandipan Deb

It’s amazing. This is the first Union government to have three IITians in its top tier, and we have such a mess over the Indian Institutes of Technology (IIT) entrance system. Jairam Ramesh, Ajit Singh and Nandan Nilekani (who has cabinet rank) are all IITians. It’s just yet another symptom of the broader malaise that affects the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) II government—it’s every man for himself, and the central leadership is too weak to intervene. 

There is no evidence at all that Kapil Sibal, human resources development minister, even informed any of his colleagues who have first-hand knowledge of the IIT system, before unleashing his spurious “one nation, one test” proposal (This is the biggest lie perpetrated in the field of Indian education in recent times; the proposal simply merges two tests into one and leaves all the others untouched).

Apparently, a consensus has been reached between the IIT Council, that supreme body, and the IITs, on the modus operandi of engineering admission. 

In an earlier column (“The sublimity of the IIT brand”, Mint, 15 June), I had argued: “What…is dangerous (in Sibal’s proposed method) is the board angle,” and that weightage given to class XII board marks while admitting students to IITs could seriously damage the cornerstone of the IIT brand, “fairness”. It has now been decided: no weightage to board marks, but only those in the top 20 percentile in their boards will be eligible for admission to IITs.

Illustration by Jayachandran/Mint

This raises numerous questions, none of which the IIT Council can give an honest answer to. I list only a few:

• On 4 July, the Hindustan Times carried a report on a 2009 Indian Institute of Science study of performance of students from India’s 29 boards over 10 years in the Kishore Vaigyanik Protsahan Yojana (KVPY), a common national test to select India’s brightest class XII science students. The average score of students from the CBSE, ICSE, West Bengal and Andhra Pradesh boards far exceeded those of students from other boards. The implications are obvious. There may be lots of students who are not in the top 20 percentile of the better boards, but are actually brighter than those in the top 20 in the laggards. But they won’t get into an IIT.

• According to data from the National Institute of Science, Technology and Development Studies, in 2010, 29,000 students sat for the ICSE (science stream), while 600,000 took the Uttar Pradesh board exams (science). So only 5,800 ICSE students will be eligible for IITs, while from UP, 120,000 will be eligible! This, when the KVPY results show that an ICSE student does much better in science than the UP board student. So, the better the board, the less chance you have of getting into IIT. The bigger the board, the higher your chances. This percentile “quota” is just plain ridiculous.

• Prof. Gautam Barua, director of IIT Guwahati, has even said that since CBSE has higher budgets than many state boards (and so teaches better), the percentile formula will lead to social inclusion. This shameless hypocrisy beggars belief. As Prof. Dheeraj Sanghi of IIT Kanpur counters: “The new scheme forces people to have additional coaching for class XII and, hence, excludes people from rural areas and financially weaker sections who do not have access to coaching. (You) are essentially (giving) an advantage to city dwellers from middle class and richer families who choose to join state board schools with a hope to get higher percentile in an easy board. That, frankly, does not sound like social inclusion.” And we all know that this whole exercise is to stymie coaching classes.

• Can all the boards announce their results by mid-June, when the engineering entrances take place? On 11 July, I clicked on the “class XII results” link on the Maharashtra Higher Secondary Board website. A blank screen opened up, with a shy “Hello” in the top left corner (The results are out, you can get them from, for example, rediff.com, but the board website is not updated). And now the boards would also have to sort through caste data (for the reservations in IITs), and find percentiles. And they have hardly any time to rejig their processes, because the government is hell-bent on having the new system in place for 2013.

I could go on, but space does not permit. However, one basic question needs to be asked. Why this obsession with class XII marks for IIT? Why not then for all competitive exams, such as medicine, law, and so on? Why not for the Union Public Service Commission (UPSC)? What do our bureaucrats say to that? I thought the UPSC entrance exams also have a thriving coaching class ecosystem, and that’s what our government is against, isn’t it?

The most immoral—I use that word deliberately—aspect of all this is the insistence that all the changes happen in 2013, knowing fully well that there is no chance that all stakeholders will be able to get systems in place in time. But 2013 it has to be, because 2014 is election year, when the Election Commission may object to such dramatic measures. So what if you are putting the fate of lakhs of students in jeopardy? Shame on you, Kapil Sibal, and shame on those members of the IIT Council going along with this, either through cravenness or with the hope that some benefits will be passed their way by their political masters.

Note: The author has been helped immensely in his research by Prof. Dheeraj Sanghi’s blog, dsanghi.blogspot.com.

Sandipan Deb is a senior journalist and editor who is interested in puzzles of all forms.

Comments are welcome at theirview@livemint.com

369 - Prof. Gautam Barua's Response to Open Letter from Prof Dheeraj Sanghi.

( from gbarua blogspot )

Response to Dheeraj Sanghi's Open Letter

According to the IIT Kanpur Website, there has been a “A devastating and rather harsh exposé of the 'scientific temper' (or the lack of it) shown by members of the IIT Council. 'JEE 2013: An Open Letter to Prof. Barua' by Prof. Dheeraj Sanghi, IIT Kanpur.”

Elsewhere in the same website we have “A very strong response by Prof. Dheeraj Sanghi, IIT Kanpur to the claims made by those defending the IIT Council proposal.”

Harsh and strong: I agree. I have no desire to engage in argument regarding my motives and my behaviour. I only wish to state that I reject all allegations of lying. I have defended the proposal because I think it is the best alternative under the present circumstances. I was not responsible for delaying the Aptitude Test. In fact not only me, but the IITG Senate wanted an Aptitiude test (see the IITG Senate resolution of Apr 25) . It should come in later years. I have no hidden agenda and I do not have any “irrestible urge to manage other IITs” (ridiculous! way beyond decency!).

I forgive Dheeraj for his trespasses for he knows not what ……

But I would like to focus on the meat of the proposal:

On the ISI Report and Percentile Ranks

Dheeraj Sanghi has stated that

They gave a report which said that more studies needed to be done with data from more boards for more years.

This had two problems.

One, MHRD would have taken a long time to get all this data. ….
He has obviously not read the report or has not understood its contents.
The ISI report made the following assumptions (the report is available here):

2 Assumptions needed for comparability of different board scores

The following assumptions would have to be made in order to make the aggregate scores of different boards comparable.

• Aggregate scores are expected to increase from less meritorious to more
meritorious students in any particular subject

• Merit distribution is the same in all boards.

The first assumption is that Boards awards marks according to merit.

This has been challenged by many with respect to State Boards without any analysis of any data (not sure it is even possible to do any analysis as merit cannot be established objectively: it has to be something society by and large agrees upon), but by anecdotal evidences of corruption, fraud etc.

The second assumption is that meritorious students are unformily distributed across all Boards (I have used the argument of the law of large numbers in relation to the population base of Boards (and not the size of the Boards) to argue in favour of this).

This has been challenged by some on the basis of the varying sizes of Boards, but again without any analysis of any data (again, not sure it is even possible to do any analysis).

The ISI report then goes on to state (bold mine):

3 Stability of board scores

Under the above assumptions, the percentile ranks of students in different board examinations become directly comparable. It would be of interest to observe how the raw aggregate scores relate to the percentile ranks, and how these relationships vary from year to year as well as across different boards.

There is therefore no need for any more analysis of data of other Boards to establish this assertion. I throw an open challenge to anyone to refute this assertion. It is so simple, what is there to refute? Any classs IX student should be able to understand. Unfortunately, many well respected IIT faculty have failed to understand this. Maybe they have not read the ISI report (the full report is enclosed in another post).

Now the ISI report does talk about analysing the data of other Boards, Why? First of all they repeat the above assertion again in section 4 (bold mine):

4 Criterion for selection

Under the two assumptions mentioned in Section 2, the percentile ranks of the students computed from aggregate scores are comparable across different boards and years. Any monotone transformation of the percentile ranks is also appropriate for comparison, as long as the same transformation is used across different boards and years. Let us now consider a few such transformations.

They then go on to consider a transformation (bold mine):

Any of the curves in the first figure is a monotone function of the percentile rank. One can use any one of them, say CBSE 2007, as standard. If the same transformation of percentile ranks is used for other boards and years, then the resulting modified score of any student of any board in any year can be regarded as the aggregate score, which could have been obtained by that student if he/she had appeared for the CBSE examinations in 2007. Thus, the transformed scores provide a common basis for comparison.

A feature of such a transformation is that, after this transformation, the scores are not evenly distributed throughout the available range of scores. In particular, when the scale of the CBSE 2007 aggregate score is used, less than 5% of the students have scores in the range of 90% to 100% of the maximum score. On the other hand, more than 10% of the students (spanning over the percentile range of 50 to 62) have scores squeezed in the narrow range of 65% to 70% of maximum score. This would lead to a loss of discriminating power in that percentile range, particularly if the board scores are used only as a component in a weighted selection criterion involving multiple components.

For maximal discrimination over the requisite range of percentile ranks, it is imperative that the scores have the uniform distribution over that range. This may be achieved if the percentile ranks themselves are used as scores. If there is a threshold percentile, say 75%, then the available range is maximally utilized by using the following linear transformation of the percentile rank:

(Percentile Rank of Student -75 / (100-75) ) * 100 -- (1)

According to this scale, a student with percentile rank 75 receives the score 0, a
student with percentile rank 90 receives 60, and the topper receives 100. Similar
computations can be done for other choices of the threshold percentile.

Then comes the recommendations, which has caused some confusion as some eminent folks seem to have read only the recommendations and not the rest of the report.

5 Recommendations
(a) The above analysis regarding stability of board scores should be carried out
for all the boards over a longer period of time.

(b) If the reported stability of the board scores is found to hold generally, then a transformed percentile rank with a suitable cut-off, as described in (1), may be used as a score representing performance in the board examination, for the
purpose of admission to tertiary education.

(c) The different boards should be asked to indicate the percentile rank of each
student in the mark sheet.

(d) In order to prepare a formal and reliable basis for selection at the tertiary level, educational institutions at that level, including the IITs, should be asked to provide to the HRD ministry a statement of marks obtained by each graduating student, together with the student’s score in the admission test of that institution (if any), the board score at the class XII level and the name of the board.

Now why is the analysis mentioned in (a) above required? Because of recommendation (b)! A transformation is recommended only if the analysis of (a) is done. But if there is to be no transformation but the percentile ranks themselves are used as scores, then there is no need to analyse any further data, as the two assumptions are there. One may point out that since ISI did not propose this, there must be a problem with using percentile ranks as scores. I think they wanted better discrimination through some transformation and so they only recommended some transformation. I confess I am not able to give a clear answer to this. But I am confident that what has been proposed is sound (see below).

Now to the formula in the proposal. The only difference is that ISI had suggested a cut-off and had recommended that a suitable cut-off be used, but the proposal uses no cut-off. Why was this done? This was done because with reservations, any cut-off could adversely affect the filling up of reserved seats. Further, while a cut-off would improve the level of discrimination, it was felt that since the proposal was likely to meet some resistance, it is better to reduce the discrimination, and let the exams be the discriminating components. So, there was no “Barua formula”, and there was nothing sinister about the proposal. The “formula” itself, which was not given by ISI (they might have felt that they would be insulting the readers of their reports if they did so – in hindsight, they should have done so!), is a standard one that can be found in any text book on Statistics. I cannot be given credit for this ( a case of reverse plagiarism?).

368 - An Open Letter to Prof. Barua from Prof Dheeraj Sanghi

Saturday, June 23, 2012

JEE 2013: An Open Letter to Prof. Barua

Dear Sir,

I write to you about the issue of how admissions should take place to engineering colleges in India, and in particular to IITs. I am sorry for the length of this, but I wanted to cover the entire space around this controversy.

While I realize that changes to JEE has been an ongoing process, and there have been reports of Chandy committee and Acharya committee in the past, I will focus on the activities in the last 9 months, since a presentation was made to IIT Council in September, 2011, by Ramasami Committee.

While the initial focus was on finding a way to consider 12^th class performance in the admission to IITs alone, the scope of the problem was hugely expanded by 2011. Ramasami Committee was not going to just look into the issue of admitting better students to IITs, but it would also look into the ways to reduce the number of exams, reduce the stress, improve school education all around, and kill the coaching menace.

The whole education system of the country was to be revamped - not by investing more resources, not by building more schools, not by hiring more teachers, not by mid-day meals, not by having a greater accountability, not by having better pedagogy, but by a simple instrument of controlling admission process of all engineering colleges of the country. Whether that is legal or not, whether that will really work or not, whether it will impinge on the autonomy of the universities, and whether that will kill the higher education while resurrecting the secondary education, these were minor points, which the members of IIT Council would find too trivial to spend their precious time on.

The chairman of the committee made a presentation to the council in September 2011. The minutes of the meeting welcomed the broad principles of the report, and asked the Chairman to submit the report within a month.

But something strange happened then. Minutes of the meeting were changed in November, 2011. The revised minutes said that the report was accepted.

I had raised this issue with you. How could a report which was not even submitted be accepted by the Council. You lied to me. You said that the report was submitted prior to the meeting. I had to send you a document from MHRD which clearly said that the report was submitted in November 2011. You immediately changed your stance. You claimed that it did not matter whether the report was submitted or not.

Of course, it did not matter to you. It did not matter to the distinguished members of the IIT Council. Whether the IIT system, or for that matter the entire higher education system in India, goes to dogs, you and other members of IIT Council are least perturbed about it. Otherwise, how could they accept a report which was not even submitted.

You, of course, had an explanation. The Chairman of the committee made a presentation and you and every other member of the Council had full trust in the chairman of the committee that the final report would be in line with the presentation made. I find it amusing. Devil is always in the details. Philosophy and principles are easy to agree on. But details are where disagreements happen. Since IIT Council accepted the non-existent report on that day in September, 2011, a large number of recommendations of the report have been changed, including the most basic recommendation on how to normalize marks across the boards. If there was no need to look at details before accepting the report, then why have all the recommendations been changed since then.

Tell me Sir, is this how things happen in IIT Guwahaty. If your MTech or PhD student just makes a presentation in front of an oral board and has not submitted a thesis, would your Institute give a degree to such a student in the hope that the student will actually submit a thesis later on, and that that thesis will be consistent with the presentation made by the student.

Would parliament pass a bill based on a speech made by the Minister and say that the exact language of the bill can be written by the Minister later on.

You may want to believe (as you wrote to me) that this was a minor procedural lapse. To me this shows the nature of IIT Council. To me, this is a conclusive proof, if any was needed, that members of IIT Council do not have excellence of IIT system as their agenda. They simply couldn’t care less.

Not only a non-existing report was accepted through the time tested method of issuing revised minutes, an implementation committee was also set up to start working on it, without waiting for any feedback from IIT Senates. Again, you argued that feedback had been received after the Acharya Committee report. Yes, of course, feedback had been sent and received, and that feedback pointed out the shoddy work that the committee had done. If the feedback suggests some minor change, then it is alright for the committee to incorporate some of it (or none of it). But if the feedback is substantial, then there must be another round of feedback after major changes have been made to the original report by the new committee. But why am I telling you all this. You are a seasoned administrator yourself. You know all this and you also know how and when to obfuscate issues.

I am not a very religious and a spiritual person. But I believe that if the origins of an action are in deceit, the action cannot lead to much good for the society.

But, still let us discuss what happened after the report was finally submitted in November, 2011.

Since the origin of all this exercise was to find a way to compare the 12^th class board marks across the country, let us consider that issue first. The report gave some statistical justification about normalization of board marks. Apparently, the committee had sought an opinion from experts at Indian Statistical Institute. (Since, this is an open letter, for the benefit of my readers; I would like to point out that ISI is not an MHRD institute. While IIT Directors and Chairpersons may be afraid of backlash from their bosses, ISI has no reason to be afraid of MHRD.) They gave a report which said that more studies needed to be done with data from more boards for more years.

This had two problems. One, MHRD would have taken a long time to get all this data. As an aside, if you look at the board data on MHRD site, it is of the year 2008. That is just the number of students sitting and passing in the 12th class. Imagine how much time they would take for any other data. Two, and a consequence of the first, ISI would take a long time to give a clean chit, if at all they give a clean chit.

I am also told by my sources in MHRD that no changes can be brought in 2014, an election year. And all the great educationists that the IIT Council members are, they buy in a purely political argument, keeping aside all academic arguments.

Since ISI had not cleared Ramasami formula, a new formula had to be prepared. And this formula must not be validated by any statistical experts. Remember what happened when the feedback on Acharya committee report was taken. Remember what happened when feedback from ISI was taken on Ramasami formula of normalization. So absolutely no further feedback was to be taken from anyone. 2013 is sacrosanct.

Now enters Barua formula. Your formula, as you explained in IIT Kanpur, only changed the scale factor, and had a way to assign an average percentile score when a large number of students had the same score. Statistically, nothing new was done. If the statistical experts had not supported the earlier formula, it was obvious that the new formula will also not get unqualified support from experts. But just to check, IIT Kanpur asked a set of statistics experts to look at this formula. As expected, it got the same response that more data was needed.

Even though the experts had serious doubts about the normalization, IIT Council gives the normalization formula its approval. Why?

2013 is sacrosanct. Studies can wait. Data can wait. Analysis can wait. But the change cannot wait.

Sir, you came to IIT Kanpur as part of the team that was to "educate" the faculty members and Senators about the new scheme. While most faculty members boycotted you, I patiently heard you. The primary assumption that you had was the law of large numbers. The boards cater to a large number of students. The distribution of quality of education is same across the country. And hence percentile rank would be comparable. A 90 percentile ranker in one board has similar "quality" as a 90 percentile ranker in another board.

It was pointed out to you that all boards are not large. In fact there are boards with just about 100 odd students (in Science stream). Several boards had around 1000 odd students. The law of large numbers is not applicable when we have such small numbers. It did not bother you. You dismissed it as a small perturbation in the whole big scheme. After all, you have to get down to implementation.

2013 is sacrosanct. Studies can wait. Data can wait. Analysis can wait. But the change cannot wait.

Then I gave you evidence that CBSE board has a statistically better educated students than a typical board. Someone on my blog further pointed to a study that ICSE board is the best and that the CBSE is the second best. And that the gap between these boards and the state boards is HUGE.

First, in a style that has now become too repetitive and boring, you dismissed the whole thing. That it destroyed your argument for comparing boards was very obvious to you, and you did not know what to say. In such a situation, a typical academic would say, let me study it more. A typical politician would sidetrack the issue. You chose to act as a politician. This won't make a difference to IITs, since all top 10,000 CBSE students will be selected in 50,000 anyway.

I gave a reason why we will need to have at least 2 lakh students selected for the second exam to have no impact on IITs, but you chose to not respond to it.

The issue was, in fact, not about 50K or 2L. That would have been a very minor point. But IIT Council has approved that all engineering colleges in the country must give at least 40 percent weight to the 12^th class marks. For admission to all these colleges, students from “better” boards like ICSE and CBSE would have a significant handicap. This was a serious challenge to Barua formula. So you had to come up with a new explanation.

At this point you said that we should not look at the marks that one receives in some exam, but should look at "native" intelligence. I then asked you whether the percentile in the board marks is a reasonable indicator of "native" intelligence. On one hand you are dismissing marks in favor of native intelligence. On the other hand, you are using percentile ranks which are based on marks. I am sure all this was crystal clear to all members of IIT Council, the great educationists that they are. But I am afraid, it was confusing to lesser mortals like me.

When I persisted with my questions, you came up with a startling revelation.

You said that you always knew that CBSE board is better than the state boards.

Did you? Then why have you been lying for the last three months. Do all the members of IIT Council know that the very basis of comparing percentile is wrong, and that you lied to them?

Of course, honorable men don't lie. They withhold critical information in larger national interest. You said that you wanted to give preference to boards where the schools do not have as much budget as CBSE schools have. This was an exercise in social inclusion.

Sorry, Sir, that won't cut. Did you explain this to Council members that your formula was not based on equality of boards, but based on the idea of social inclusion. Why was this information never given to other stake holders. Shouldn't social inclusion policies be discussed and debated in Parliament, rather than sneaked in stealthily by an over-zealous member of IIT Council.

We already have 51% seats reserved for the reason of social inclusion. 27 percent seats are exclusively for persons who belong to socially, educationally and financially backward classes. We would be happy to have greater amount of reservation or follow other methods of social inclusion, if Parliament asks us to do so. But please do not lie to us.

And there is a tiny little point about this so-called social inclusiveness. As I discuss below, the new scheme forces people to have additional coaching for the 12^th class, and hence excludes people from rural areas and financially weaker sections, who do not have access to coaching as much as city folks have. So what you are essentially doing is to give an advantage to city dwellers coming from middle class and richer families, but who choose to join state board schools with a hope to get higher percentile in an easy board. That frankly, does not sound like social inclusion.

In short, the most important pillar supporting the changes to the admission process was gone. A reasonable academic system would have taken a step back and went back to the drawing board. But IIT Council is not about education or academics. It is primarily a political system. And on top of that, this has become an ego issue by now for its members. How dare these faculty members, the small pawns on the chess board, challenge the King. Don’t they know that

2013 is sacrosanct. Studies can wait. Data can wait. Analysis can wait. But the change cannot wait.

Having demolished the most important pillar, let us turn our attention on the other goals of the change.

A major assumption of this exercise has been that giving weight to the 12th class marks in the admission process will improve the quality of school education in the country. I had asked you the following question.

Many states used to have admission based on board marks. Later, they moved to common entrance tests, and then in the last several years, moved back to a system whereby they take a composite score of 12th class marks and common engineering test. Has there been any study done to show what models have worked effectively to incentivise students to take school education seriously. No reply from your side.

I wonder if anyone in IIT Council even tried to find out. In fact, it is obvious that they are not aware of any study. If there was any study that indicated support for this change, we would have received copies of it by now. And if there are studies which indicated that this does not work, I wouldn't expect any member of IIT Council to share that study with other members of the IIT Council, not to talk about general public.

What kind of leadership this bunch of great educationists will provide to India, if they are not bothered about any research before a major policy change affecting millions of people.

Talking about leadership and the quality of people in the IIT Council, let me tell you a discussion I had with one honorable member. This member tells me that the school education in Tamilnadu has been severely affected after it was decided to have admissions based on 12th class marks alone. Question banks, coaching for those question banks, and pressure on the board to have simple tests is commonplace. He was convinced that if the Council adopted inclusion of 12th class marks for admission to all engineering colleges in the country, the quality of school education will go down in the entire country.

Will the gentleman speak up in the Council meeting. Your guess is as good as mine. The Minister has repeatedly assured us that there was not a single voice of dissent amongst the Council members, and I know that this gentleman was present in the meeting.

The point is not whether this gentleman is right or wrong, and whether school education has suffered in Tamilnadu or not. The point is that a member of IIT Council is convinced that the policy is a disaster, and yet decides to keep quiet in the meeting. One wonders why?

We are constantly hearing about engineering admission providing an incentive to our youth to attend schools. What is the incentive to keep quiet.

We keep hearing about “corruption” in public life. So I looked up the online dictionary (www.dictionary.com). It defines corruption as: perversion of integrity, dishonest proceedings.

You, of course, need document for everything, even though nothing you say is based on any data, facts, study, or analysis. So the requirement of data is only for lesser mortals, not for members of the IIT Council.

So we tell you about a study of Tamilnadu board. Like in all previous cases, you first try to deflect the issue. You explain that the problem in Tamilnadu is that CBSE students find it extremely difficult to get admission there, since they have decided to give admission based on marks and not based on percentile. Well, Sir, if a single board dominates the education scene to the extent that Tamilnadu board does in that state, then whether you give admission based on marks or percentile, it won't make a difference as an incentive for the students to spend time in school. If they used percentile, it amounts to board level quotas, which means 97% seats would go to students of TN Baord. If they used marks, then perhaps 98% seats go to TN Board students.

Do you really believe that if TN Board students had access to 1% or 2% less seats in the engineering colleges, they would all flock to schools. If the system is really that sensitive to 1% or 2% that it can create a difference between a disaster and a wonderful system, then it becomes even more important to have proper research and come up with the best possible number for incorporating school marks.

Surprisingly, you agreed that the quality of education had indeed gone down in the state of Tamilnadu after the admission test was abolished and admission based purely on 12th class was started. I must tell you, Sir, that this is what I admire in you the most, your honesty, when you have exhausted all excuses.

But you always have an explanation, even if it keeps changing from day to day. You argued that the problem in TN was that they gave 100 percent weight to board marks. But IIT Council has decided to give variously as 40% or 50% weight to the board marks for admission to NITs and IITs.

Hmm. I also see in the decision that board marks can be given a weight between 40% and 100%. If you are convinced that 100% weight is a cause for disaster, did you try to warn your colleagues in IIT Council about it. May be the upper limit should have been recommended as something less than 100%.

If 0% is the current situation, and 100% is a disaster, how do we know what is the right weight. If we keep it at 90%, would it be better than 0%. If we keep it at 60%, even that could be a worse situation than 0%. You can see that it has to be done very carefully. If we make a mistake today, the future generations will never forgive us. But:

2013 is sacrosanct. Studies can wait. Data can wait. Analysis can wait. But the change cannot wait.

So, how does the IIT Council decide? It asks seven Senates to debate and suggest a number. The task of the IIT Council as enshrined in the Institutes of Technology Act (1961) includes coordination between IITs. Seven Senates give numbers between 0 and 40. I asked my 8 year old son, if he was to coordinate between 7 friends who are proposing numbers between 0 and 40, what will he do. He told me that he will take the average. I then asked him, what if there is strong resentment on that. He then said that he will listen to the arguments of everyone, and who ever has a more convincing argument, he will choose a number between the average and that number. Whatever methodology you may adopt, it appears to even an 8-year old that the final number would be between 0 and 40. But IIT Council, in its infinite wisdom, decided that number to be 50% for IITs. No explanation is forthcoming in minutes or any other document.

But how dare someone like me, a mere professor in one of the IITs even ask IIT Council for justification of a decision affecting millions of people. Great educationists don’t believe in educating others. I am sure they have all read that famous quote from Gordon, “better to remain silent and appear a fool, than to open your mouth and remove all doubt.”

To me, it shows the utter disregard that IIT Council has for IITs.

This entire discussion clearly shows that the goal of improving school education through the instrument of admission process is not likely to be achieved, and indeed if sufficient care is not taken, we might destroy whatever education we have. It calls for a slow, calibrated approach, after a lot of studies. But:

2013 is sacrosanct. Studies can wait. Data can wait. Analysis can wait. But the change cannot wait.

Sir, what happens to boards which only award grades. What happens to students who go for diplomas after 10th class, but want to come back to engineering education. What happens to students who may have done schooling abroad and the percentile rank is not available. What happens if some board is unable to announce the results in time. What happens if a student brings in a revised marksheet later on, and demand that s/he be given admission to his/her higher choice of programs. The questions are endless in the new system where board marks will be used for ranking.

 But, Sir, I am sure that the superhuman members of IIT Council have thought about each and every such contingency, and everything will just run extremely smoothly next year. But if the members would be kind enough to share their thoughts with the students who are trying to make sense out of all this while preparing for JEE 2013, they will reduce the stress amongst them considerably. (Remember, one of the goals of this proposal is to reduce stress.)

Sir, I am confused about one thing. If giving weight to 12^th class marks in admission is going to be so revolutionary, why not give weight to 12^th class marks in the Civil Services exam as well. Why not do the same thing in all other competitive exams, whether for admission to various courses or for selections in the jobs.

In almost all humanities and social science courses, the admission is through the 12^th class marks. I am sure that the state of school education in those courses is absolutely fantastic. But as a self-declared leading educationist of the country, you would feel insulted if someone were to ask for data on this. So I won’t ask. Sir, I have no interest in insulting someone who has been my teacher, mentor, friend, and a guide.

It is not as if there are no alternatives to try. Even if someone was convinced that giving weight to 12^th class marks in admission would magically improve the school system, there are alternative methods that many faculty members have proposed.

I remember writing to you long time ago that JEE should make an incremental change in the 12th class cut-off, from 60% to a slightly higher number, based on a study whereby we look at the 12th class marks of all IIT students, and set it up at a number whereby 99% of the JEE qualified students get qualified on the basis of 12th class as well. To reject even 1% students would send out a strong signal that we care for school system, and given the vagaries of the board grading, students will not want to just target 63% or 65% (whatever number that study will reveal), but at least 10 to 15 percent higher than that. And if your theory about board marks is correct, then here was a method that would encourage students to go back to school without the pressure and stress that the proposed scheme introduces.

You told me at that time that no one gets excited about incremental change. It would be extremely difficult to get this passed in the Joint Admissions Board (of IITs), as everyone will look at this as a minor tinkering with the system. You also mentioned that a minor tinkering would also not get political approval necessary for any changes in JEE.

So, even though there is some evidence that using 12^th class marks for ranking can lead to lowering of school education, even though you appear to agree with using 12^th class marks as eligibility, but because you cannot convince your political bosses about it, therefore, you are willing to support a hugely risky exercise. You are willing to do something that can potentially destroy school education, and that too without any research. And you are not even willing to consider going slow like using 12^th class marks for eligibility in the beginning, collecting data, and if data permits then giving 12^th class marks a small, 10% weight, which slowly increases over a period of time.

Going slow on changes has only one danger. What if future Directors disagree with the process. We want quick changes when we are convinced that we are the only ones with wisdom. In other words, this has become an ego issue. And, of course,

2013 is sacrosanct. Studies can wait. Data can wait. Analysis can wait. But the change cannot wait.

The next goal of this grand proposal is to reduce the impact of coaching in our educational processes. When this issue became public in January, and I started writing my blogs, your initial reaction was that, of course, if we give weight to 12th class board marks, there will be people who can afford to lose a few marks in JEE and compensate that in the 12th class board exams, and hence it would be possible to get into IITs without the coaching.

But as in all other matters, your position has continued to change to suit your arguments. When a lot of people complained that it will lead to a greater amount of corruption, since it would be easy to "buy" marks in some boards, you immediately changed your position to, "but board marks will hardly matter in the admission." Your argument was that the difference between the board marks of qualified candidates will be very small, and primarily the ranking will be based on the entrance test.

When you were again challenged and asked if it makes no difference, and most faculty members want to postpone this part till we have some experience with the new admission process, then why should be hurry things up. You again changed your position to, "but the small differences are going to be important in ranks."

Please decide whether the board marks will make a difference or not, in your opinion. If they will make a big difference, then how do you address the corruption issue. If they will make a small difference, why will students go back to school. They can spend the same time in coaching and increase the probability of higher marks in the entrance exam. (Of course, when I ask you this question, it is purely a rhetorical question. I know you don't have an answer.)

By the month of May, something interesting started to happen. All the coaching institutes started advertising in full page advertisements across geographies, in multiple papers that they want students to do 12th class coaching with them. After the decision of the Council, many coaching center owners were called to TV Studios and they said on National TV channels how happy they were, and how their business will go up substantially.

And finally, when you had no excuse left, you admitted that coaching will indeed go up in the new system. But you hoped that this will be a short term measure, and in the long term coaching will again reduce. Of course, it is too much to expect a rational argument from you on what magic will happen a few years from now to reduce coaching.

So, yet another noble goal of the Ramasami Committee has fallen. But:

2013 is sacrosanct. Studies can wait. Data can wait. Analysis can wait. But the change cannot wait.

Note that if the coaching goes up, and now there is a need to get coached for 12^th class exam as well, it creates barrier for people from rural areas and those from weaker financial backgrounds. Coaching happens mostly in cities, and it costs money, a lot of money. People have to pay not just a very high tuition, but staying away from family also means additional costs for lodging and boarding. Currently, IITs are proud of having a substantial number of students from remote areas and rural areas, since they can get reasonable marks in 12^th, and only do coaching for JEE, which they somehow manage. But in the new scheme, the role of coaching will be so large that rural and poor students can say good-bye to IITs.

I have explained to you my argument as to why the new format would discriminate against rural students and those from economically disadvantaged families. You and your boss keep telling media that the current JEE is elitist and the new format will attract more rural and more poor students. Care to explain how? (And, by the way, if the current JEE has some problems, it is because Directors such as yourself have stonewalled all changes, disregarded all suggestions from faculty members and other stake holders in the last few years, except when forced by courts.)

The next goal of Ramasami Committee was to reduce stress by decreasing the number of examinations. Let us see if that is being achieved by the new proposal.

In the current system, we have AIEEE, and we have JEE. (All other exams not considered since they remain the same.) In the new system, we have renamed the two exams, put them on the same day, and made it compulsory for everyone to give these two exams.

The most fantastic idea that IIT Council wants the students and parents of this nation to believe is that if we rename the exams, the stress decreases. Sir, why not go a step further. Why don't we insist that all exams in the country be called Joint Entrance Exam. We can have, in addition to, JEE-Main and JEE-Advanced, JEE BITS, JEE-Manipal, JEE-VIT, JEE-xyz, and so on. Now, everyone has to give just one exam, possibly spread over an entire month or two. Voila, we have reduced stress, and you would have satisfied your boss even more. Now, he can truly claim to have "One Nation, One Test."

Sir, seriously, this is a slap on the face of all the hard-working, intelligent students. If IIT Council believes that the people will buy this, then it shows their lack of confidence in the nation, in the intelligence of its youth. But it really just shows how egoist they are. The members of IIT Council believe that the entire intelligence of the nation is concentrated in 7 Directors and 7 Chairmen, and perhaps a few more persons.

Dictionary.com gives the meaning of the word  arrogance as: offensive display of superiority or self-importance; overbearing pride.

Till now AIEEE and JEE was separated by typically a week or two. One could give an exam, and then cool down, prepare once again, and give the second exam.  Now, IIT Council is telling the students that that caused stress. If both the exams are on the same day, the stress will go down.

Sir, can I ask you who is an expert of psychology in IIT Council, who said this.

Sorry, Sir.

Don't have to answer this question. I can guess the answer. Each one of you is an expert on psychology. If you say that reducing the 7-14 day of preparation period to 2 hours will reduce the stress, the lesser mortals that we are, cannot question the wisdom of honorable members of IIT Council.

Currently, 12 lakh students give AIEEE, and 5 lakh students give JEE. Now, 12 lakh students will give both JEE and AIEEE. I don't see a reduction in the number of exams. But I see an increase in the number of exams, at least for 7 lakh students. Oh, but I forgot. You have renamed the two exams to a common name. That is why the number of exams have reduced. Silly me. I keep forgetting that renaming of exams is what is supposed to cause the reduction in the number of exams, and the amount of consequent stress. Sorry.

And, Sir, you said it right on the National TV. It will make no difference to have these 7 lakh kids give an extra exam, since they will all get zeroes anyway. After all 30% of 0 is 0. But, Sir, would it in any way affect their self-confidence. What happens to a kid when s/he is forced to give an exam, and then the kid gets a zero. Do this for 7 lakhs of them. Why. Because 30% of 0 is 0. So it does not matter.

Sir, I am confident that everyone in IIT Council is an expert in maths too. But it does matter.

May I suggest that you consider non-IITians as humans. Perhaps, if you start treating them as human beings, and provide opportunities to them, they could do wonderful things in life. Remember the demographic dividend.

But, if the goal was to reduce the 182 admission tests in this country to something smaller, then why not try to stop all the admission tests of various state universities and deemed universities. Oh, we can't do that, since we cannot infringe upon the autonomy of those private or state universities. We can only deny autonomy to those institutes for whom we write the check.

So we reduce the number of exams from 182 to 181, and that too by renaming two exams with the same name. Excellent progress by IIT Council. Welcome to "One Nation, 181 tests."

Sir, by the way, did it occur to anyone in the IIT Council that when we have diversity in the kind of programs that our universities offer, their admission requirement could also be different. An IT Institute, for instance, may not want to have a test of Chemistry, or at least may not want to give equal weight to the Chemistry marks. Architecture programs and Design programs typically have a test of drawing and aptitude. Programs in bio-technology and other such programs may want to check for exposure to biology. On the other hand, there may be a university who may want their students to be aware of society around them, and may want a test on current affairs, or general knowledge, etc.

IIT Council is saying that none of these are permitted within the borders of this country. Experiments with education cannot be done in educational institutes. They can only be done within the confines of the brains of IIT Council members (who, as we have discussed earlier, are willing to accept a non-existent report, willing to withhold critical information from each other, and who are not interested in even reading the minutes of the meeting). The entire research in education will henceforth be done only during the IIT Council meetings. The education departments should only produce BEds. Actually, even that is not needed, since the schools will anyway improve without teachers, just by tinkering with the admission process of the universities.

Sir, as you might have noticed there are lots of concerns, lots of issues. But

2013 is sacrosanct. Studies can wait. Data can wait. Analysis can wait. But the change cannot wait.

When we read the Ramasami Committee report, there was one part in it which made many of us happy. It had suggested that there should be an Aptitude test. This was supposed to solve two problems. One, we should be able to align the interests and abilities of students more closely with what they study. Two, make it truly coaching proof. We were really hoping that MHRD will enable bringing of modern examination techniques to India. We were doubly happy when we heard that our own Director, Prof. Sanjay Dhande would be heading the academic part of the new test (at that time known as ISEET). He even visited ETS in US to figure out what can be done. But our hopes were dashed very soon.

If you remember the interaction with your committee in IIT Kanpur, we requested Prof. Acharya to explain what an aptitude test is. We thought it was a simple question. After all he was a member of the committee that had strongly recommended the Aptitude test. But when he could not speak anything coherent about the aptitude test, we could make a guess about his contribution to the report.

Designing an aptitude test is a very difficult exercise. Ensuring that each question (known as Item in the language of ETS) is free of any cultural bias, gender bias, environment bias, etc., is not easy, and then there is something special about India, each test has to be in multiple languages. So each item has to be translated in multiple languages while making sure that no bias creeps in, in any of the versions. This would have required tremendous sustained effort for several years. But

2013 is sacrosanct. Studies can wait. Data can wait. Analysis can wait. But the change cannot wait.

So the most promising part of the recommendations was quietly dropped.

Sir, how a group of Directors working on the implementation issues can just drop on their own an important decision of the IIT Council. Shouldn't they report everything to IIT Council and take its fresh approval.

Even more strangely, in the minutes of the meeting of the Joint Councils of IITs, NITs, and IIITs, there is a line which says that the Chairman of IIT Council (the HRD Minister) has unlimited rights to change anything about anything decided that day. Then why minute anything. This one line would have been enough as the minutes. And everything else can be an office order later on. It is obvious that the members of IIT Council are competing with each other to please the boss. One wonders why? What is the incentive to keep quiet? Can we think of an incentive mechanism that will make them speak?

Sir, in the September 2011 meeting of the IIT Council, two reports were accepted. One was a report which actually existed at that time, the report of the Kakodakar Committee which talked about giving autonomy to IITs. The other one was a non-existent report of the Ramasami Committee which when finalized would take away autonomy of IITs. I find it very interesting that the implementation of the Kakodakar Committee report will be in 2015, while the implementation of the Ramasami Committee report will be in 2013. Why do I even think that it may have something to do with the fact that parliamentary elections are likely to be held in 2014.

Sir, there are many more issues. The division of roles of Senates and Boards and Council is a major issue to be resolved. The conduct of the new types of exams - whether it can be done with the same care and rigor and transparency that IIT JEE has been conducted so far, given the recent history of CBSE exams. Should the so-called JEE Advanced be controlled by IIT system when it is being forced upon all 12 lakh students. If it is not controlled by IITs, will the exam continue to have a focus of finding a long tail distribution of marks, which is necessary to select a smaller number of students from a very large set.  But a discussion on these issues will sidetrack the main issue, and hence I am not writing about them in this note.

Sir, let me summarize below all the assumptions and goals that have been articulated by Ramasami Committee or by its supporters, and what have we learnt about them in the last few months:

1. Since boards have large number of students, law of large numbers is applicable.

    We have learnt that many boards are too small.

2. The quality of academic preparation of all boards is statistically the same.

    We have learned that ICSE and CBSE have been performing much ahead of other boards.  You agreed with this, and you also agreed that you knew about this earlier, but still continued to make false statements.

3.  Giving weight to 12th class marks in ranking will improve school education.

     Even though many states have done such transitions in the last few years, there is no study done regarding effectiveness of this in incentivizing students to pay attention to school. In Tamilnadu where board marks have 100% weight, you agree that it has affected even less attention to schools than in the past. There is a reasonable belief outside IIT Council that to the extent consideration of 12th class marks during admission will incentivise students to take school education seriously, the same effect can be achieved by having the 12th class marks as eligibility.

4. The scheme will reduce coaching.

    You have admitted that the proposed scheme has already increased coaching, though you hope that it might reduce in the long term. You have no data to substantiate your hope.

5. The scheme will reduce stress by reducing the number of exams.

     The number of exams get reduced from 182 to 181 only because you are renaming the two exams with the same name. In fact the total number of exams taken by students on an average is increasing in the new proposal. The stress is also likely to go up because we are forcing 7 lakh students to give an exam in which you expect that they will get 0 marks.

6. An Aptitude test will be a good way to test students for different kind of courses and programs.

    The aptitude test has been removed from the latest proposal.

7. All board marks will be available for all students within such time that the result of the test can be announced by 2nd June.

   This year, all board results did not come out in May. What happens if the results don't come out in May next year too.

Sir, I am absolutely sure that you will ignore all this. I am convinced that no amount of data, no amount of research, and no amount of logic can dissuade you from going ahead with this, even though on every individual point, you have finally conceded that there are/were problems with the original positions. We have done tremendous amount of research, and presented our case rationally. On the other hand, your case has always been based on hopes and beliefs. It has always been based on you being a Director and hence your views should prevail over views of faculty members. IIT Council is a higher body, and hence its decision should prevail over Senates. But you call us hardliners

Sir, I have a suspicion that the two of us have no disagreement. From all you have said, it appears that two of us have converged to a single position, but there is something that is stopping you from accepting that position publicly, even though you have agreed to pretty much all parts of that position individually. I would never know why you are doing so. Why you are willing to say that the final proposal takes care of all concerns of IIT Guwahaty Senate, when out of the only two concerns that they had expressed, neither one has been accepted by the Council. Why you are willing to be used and abused in front of media and elsewhere. Why you are saying things that you don't believe to be true. Sir, is someone blackmailing you on some issue? If there is a problem, we can talk offline, and please count on me for any help whatsoever.

Sir, this has been a very long letter. I thank you for reading all of this. I know that at places I have used harsh language. I know that if such a letter is written by one of my ex-students, I would feel terrible. But I want you to know that writing this has not been easy on me either. I have been writing this for the last 15 days, editing and changing, and thinking whether to publish this at all. I hope that I will always have sufficient wisdom and strength to never do anything that will beget such a letter from an ex-student.

I must say that I truly admire you for the public debate that you allowed us to indulge in. Without someone from IIT Council going public, we would not have known the absurdities, the egos, the irrationalities, and the likes. Whatever I am saying here about you must be applicable to several other members of the Council as well, but I can't say that since they do not take public positions. I have already mentioned about Chairman of an earlier committee unable to explain a key recommendation of his report. I have already talked about a gentleman who despite having a strong belief that this will damage the school system prefers to keep quiet in the meeting. Let me give you one more example of an IIT Council member.

The Chairman of the Ramasami Committee visited us at IIT Kanpur. He claimed to have done enormous amount of statistical analysis. His claims were bordering on being obnoxious. So I asked a few questions. How many students took 12th class exam in 2011. He said 18 million. I said that appears to be on the high side as that is the number of students joining school in class 1 every year, and there is a pretty high dropout rate at every level. He gave me 3 more numbers. Within a 2-minute timeframe, I am hearing 4 numbers ranging from 6 million to 18 million. That is the kind of data he had. He then continues with his data analysis. A greater percent of INSPIRE scholars are from rural background than the percent of IIT students. I did the cardinal sin of asking for data. I truly was amazed at his claim, and was curious as to what the IIT percent is. He told me that he did not have IIT data because JEE folks are too secretive. I then asked how come he could say that the percent was higher for INSPIRE scholars if he did not have data for IITs. He literally started shouting at me, and I had to apologize and leave the meeting. However, the thorough gentleman that he is, he conveyed to me through another professor who was witness to this whole incident, that he was apologetic for raising his voice. Note that he was only sorry for raising voice. He was not sorry for writing a report without knowing the data.

So I am convinced that several other members of the council are responsible for the state of affairs. You are getting the flak for being better than them, for engaging issues in public.

But such is life.

One last point. You talked about you trying to help IITs unite, and help save the IIT system. Sir, believe us. We too want to save the IIT system. I think it is under attack from IIT Council. If Directors and Chairpersons just focused on improving their IITs and allowed freedom and autonomy to other IITs, the IIT system will not just be saved but grow and move towards excellence. But if you feel that managing one IIT is too small a job for you, and you have this irresistible urge to manage other IITs, may I suggest that you consider resigning from the primary membership of IIT Council. The urge will go away on its own, or may require a few sittings of "Power Anonymous."

With best regards,

(Dheeraj Sanghi)

PS: To readers of my blog, no comments are permitted on this letter.

Posted by Dheeraj Sanghi at 8:58 AM

311 - So Who Wants To Do JEE-Huzoori? - OUT LOOK INDIA

So Who Wants To Do JEE-Huzoori?

The IITs see red in HRD minister’s idea of a single test for engineering colleges

Anuradha Raman, Arindam Mukherjee, Chandrani Banerjee, Madhavi Tata, Dola Mitra, Pushpa Iyengar

Cycle of life Scene at the Bansal coaching centre in Kota

Brand IIT versus GoI. It’s only the latest battle in this summer of seemingly endless discontent. Union minister for human resource development Kapil Sibal continues his on-off battle to snap away at the heels of the IIT-combine in his quest to rewrite the statute books. Sibal’s goal of a single engineering examination for the centres par excellence and all engineering colleges has caused consternation and heartburn. But, more importantly, it has led to plenty of confusion (and even fear) among the hundreds of thousands of students lining up to enter the portals of the country’s premier engineering institutes.


Sources in the HRD ministry insist the entire exercise was conducted democratically. But when Sibal found very few takers for his proposal, which he wanted to introduce by 2013, he decided to ram them home. The result—a mutiny by the IITs.

The media has reported extensively on how the IIT combine shot down Sibal’s proposal back in 2010 when he had constituted a committee under Damodar Acharya, director, IIT-Kharagpur, to propose a common engineering examination with adequate weightage to Class 12 examinations. When this was rejected, another committee recommended a two-tier exam—one for screening, and the second, an advanced one, with Class 12 exam scores having 40 per cent weightage. This, too, the IITs rejected. And now, yet again, they’re raising the banner of revolt, citing that IITs are autonomous institutes governed by an act of Parliament and whose affairs the GoI should stay out of.

Are the IITs then really as cussed and resistant to change as they’re being made out to be? At the 44th meeting of the Council of IITs (comprising ex-officio members of IITs, directors and chairmen, secretary-MHRD and other officials) in the HRD ministry, held on May 12, with the exception of IIT-Guwahati, it was decided to retain the existing examination format for next year. The IITs also broadly agreed on the following:

• Nothing should be done to tamper with the existing system in a hurry. It will only lead to confusion.
• Other broad agreements included a screening test for the purpose of admissions to the undergraduate programme at the IITs, from which a limited number of candidates would be eligible for an advanced test.
• There was no clear majority view on whether school board performance would count in the final merit list.
• Details of the advanced test were to be finalised in due course after a discussion with all the IITs so that it could be implemented from 2014.

Says A.K. Chaturvedi, dean, IIT-Kanpur, “We are open to discussions. But we strongly feel that what Sibal is proposing will not only lead to more stress but also lead to the mushrooming of thousands of coaching institutes—both of which the minister wanted to bring down. The proposals suggested by him defeat his twin purposes.” Each of the IITs has a separate senate, which exercises control on the admission procedure. In this raging debate, the senates, at times, are at variance with the council. Broadly, the senates of IITs, with the exception of IIT-Guwahati, have agreed on the following:

• The current practice will continue.
• From 2014, the National Entrance Test will be used as a screening test for the purpose of admissions.
• From those who clear it, a certain number of candidates will be chosen to take the advanced test.
• IITs will conduct the advanced test. Only this test will determine whether a candidate gets a seat.
• Board performance will not be used for the final merit list.

While seeking time, the IITs’ resistance to board exams serving as markers for admission stems from a concern: the heterogeneity in syllabus, instruction and evaluation process across boards makes standardisation unfeasible. Evidently, the ministry hasn’t factored this in.

Sibal too has his supporters. “Since the boards and their examination standards were different, it was felt that the candidates should be evaluated through a common examination,” says Damodar Acharya, director, IIT-Kharagpur. SAT in the US, he goes on to add, forms one component of the basis for admission, the other components being school performance and recommendations from teachers. In India, admission to engineering schools is based entirely on a student’s performance in the JEE. Academically, this is not the best solution.

“The branding of an institution is not through an entrance exam but through the kind of intellectual capital it produces.”Dr Pritam Singh, Former director, IIM-Lucknow

Dr Pritam Singh, former director of IIM-Lucknow and a prominent management teacher, feels that globally, all leading institutions have followed a common thread without any impact on their own systems. Says he, “Universities like Harvard, MIT, Stanford, Carnegie Mellon and Cornell have a common exam along with smaller colleges and universities. That has not eroded their brand value. The branding of an academic institution is not through an entrance examination but through the kind of intellectual capital it produces. The Brahminical arrogance of some institutions which consider themselves superior and others untouchable is not fair.”
As someone who has considerable stake in this raging debate for the sheer effort in enabling the most depressed sections dream of getting into the IITs, Super 30 coach Anand Kumar’s mobile phone has not stopped ringing. He even has anxious students and parents land up at his doorstep. “My students, current, past and future, are calling me up and expressing concern about the proposals. Will poor students be affected by the change, they ask me.”

Poor students will be affected if school marks were accorded weightage. “The marks awarded are so low that they cannot compete with ICSE or CBSE,” says Anand. “If the new system comes into being, they would be overlooked. They would have to go back to being sweepers and compounders in spite of having the potential to be engineers and scientists.”

“Built as centres of excellence, IITs were an elitist concept. But then Cambridge, Oxford or Harvard, all are elitist.”Sandipan Deb, Alumnus, IIT-Kharagpur

Similar scenes of confusion prevail in Hyderabad as well. Many students who were packed off to coaching centres from Class 8 onwards to conquer the IIT rainbow are now grappling with the implications of Sibal’s proposed monster. While the common test is being offered as a solution to many ills, students and parents are unsure about the experiment. Avinash Dal, whose son Ashwin will take the test in 2014, says that one man (Sibal) should not decide the fate of so many students. “IITians have done our country proud,” he says. “This change may dilute the quality of IITs. It appears to be a move to take over the autonomy of IITs and bring in foreign universities.” Ashwin, a student at Narayana Institute, shrugs off the hullabaloo but wonders what the main exam would consist of. Would it be language, mental ability, physics, chemistry or math? “The suspense is what is making many students nervous,” he says. 

Academicians have mixed feelings about the test. Renowned educationist and MLC, Chukka Ramaiah, who runs the IIT Ramaiah coaching centre, says the change would bring Indian students on a par with international standards. “IITs are ranked 147th in the world. Hong Kong, Beijing and Singapore are ahead of us. When IITians enter the global market, they sometimes appear to lack in comprehension, reasoning capacity and analytical thinking,” he says. If coaching centres are the target of Sibal’s policy, they do not seem to have taken any hit yet. The intake into these centres continues to be mind-boggling.
In Kota town of Rajasthan, better known as the epicentre of IIT-JEE coaching, the centres have woken up to the import of the new policy in the offing. Out here, many appear for exams from the centres at Kota or from their hometowns, not from the schools they have studied at. Sibal’s changes would mean these centres will have to reorient their package to include preparations for board exams—the results of which will matter in Sibal’s scheme of things.

Tamalika Basu, who has been at the famed Bansal Institute in Kota for 20 days, thinks differently. “The Bansal Institute,” she says, “is teaching me five steps to learning. When I can clear them, they say I will clear IIT—so I would certainly be able to clear my board exams. And I don’t need to attend school for it. I’ll stay on here in Bansal by registering my centre in a dummy school to write my exams.” As things stand, such dummy schools (or schools where one appears for Class 12 exams) will provide the cushion for students to continue with their IIT-JEE preparations alongside board exams.

Where, from here? Students at the Chaitanya Academy, Hyderabad. (Photograph by P. Anil Kumar)

Former IITians, who never really sever the umbilical cord with their alma mater, feel there has been too much interference with the IIT system. Arjun Malhotra, an alumnus of IIT-Kharagpur, chairman of global IT giant Headstrong, and one of the most prominent voices amongst the IIT alumni, says, “I don’t know the objective behind the common exam, but it is completely irrational. My view is simple: why try and fix something that is not broken?”

People attached to the IIT universe say that Sibal’s attempt to equate the combined exams for engineering colleges with GMAT/GRE is faulty. Students get several chances in a year to take exams like the GMAT or GRE and the scores are valid for a specified period of time. No such system has been proposed for the new joint entrance exams. A bigger problem is that, with all the major engineering exams coming under one umbrella, should a student miss the date or is unable to take the exam, he/she loses an entire year. Again, there is total ambiguity on this aspect.

“I don’t know the objective behind a common exam, but it’s totally irrational. Why fix something that is not broken?”Arjun Malhotra, Chairman, Headstrong

Says an IIT professor, “You are making the whole system completely uncertain. This will bring 18 different boards with their own systems and their own judgement into one system and open doors for corruption.” Concern is also being expressed over the enhanced logistics Sibal’s proposal for a combined exam will entail.
Fundamentally, it’s a deep-rooted opposition. A common examination would equate the IIT brand with “smaller” entities and take away the vaunted IIT-JEE control away from them. Says Sandipan Deb, an IIT-Kharagpur alumnus, “The IITs were built to be centres of excellence, with the best students and the best teachers. It was an elitist concept, as out of a lakh applications only 2,000-3,000 could get in. But all great education systems, like Oxford, Cambridge and Harvard, are elitist.”

It was probably because of this closely-controlled IIT system that the Singapore government in February this year expressed a desire to have an IIT campus in their country, which already has campuses from great universities like Johns Hopkins. In fact, PanIIT, an influential IIT alumni association, too has written to the HRD minister voicing its concerns against standardisation, and advising him to respect their autonomy.

Whether you see merit in Sibal’s proposal or in the IITs’ opposition to it, one thing is clear: the current stand-off isn’t helping anyone, least of all, IIT aspirants. Five lakh of them take the JEE, and another 10 lakh the All India Engineering Entrance Examination (AIEEE). They are uncertain about how Sibal’s proposed combined exam will work for them—and whether it will be fair. There are many doubters at the moment. Sibal will need to do more than standardise the system. He also needs to get back to the basics, starting with sorting out our schools.

---

By Anuradha Raman with Arindam Mukherjee, Chandrani Banerjee, Madhavi Tata, Dola Mitra and Pushpa Iyengar

275 - IIT-Guwahati Director Draws Flak From Faculties' Body - OutLook

IIT-Guwahati Director Draws Flak From Faculties' Body
PTI | New Delhi | Jun 12, 2012

                                  IIT-Guwahati Director Gautam Barua today came under attack from an apex body of the faculties of all IITs for supporting the Centre's 'one-nation one-test' proposal for entry into them and other centrally- funded engineering institutes.

Without naming Barua, All India IIT Faculty Federation, said, in a statement, that it was "shocked and pained" that one of the IITs' directors had criticised on TV channels the decision taken by the Senate of the IIT-Kanpur to conduct its own entrance exam from next year opposing the Centre's format.

Participating in a TV debate over the issue two days ago, Barua had said, "I am sad about the extreme step taken by the IIT-Kanpur Senate on such a small issue".

Criticising the statement, Federation Secretary A K Mittal said, "It is unfortunate that a professor of the IIT system thinks that the selection of the students and the academic autonomy of the IITs is small issue."

Mittal's remarks came days after the Federation attacked IIT-Kharagpur Director Damodar Acharya for supporting the Centre's proposal.

The faculties' body hailed the decision taken by IIT -Kanpur, saying it has taken "lead in making the long-awaited, justified action of announcing its own admission test through its Senate Resolution (as sanctioned by the Institute Act).

"The IIT-Kanpur decision by no means can be treated as an isolated event. In fact, its sets the tone for other IITs that do not agree with the current HRD Ministry proposal of common entrance test to make similar decisions in their respective senates and support the initiative of IIT-Kanpur," it said.

The Federation accused a section of the media of "trying to project that the IITs are split over the HRD Ministry's proposal about the common engineering admission test".

Mittal told PTI that the Federation welcomed HRD Minister Kapil Sibal's statement that the government has no intent to impinge on the autonomy of the IITs.

But, he expressed resentment over the government's "present action and responses" on the issue.

Talking to reporters in Washington yesterday, Sibal had rejected criticism and virtually ruled out going back on the new proposal. He, however, had said that the government has no intent to impinge on the autonomy of the IITs.

Mittal said the faculty members had no personal agenda and that it was their responsibility to "defend and protect the academic excellence and autonomy of these great institutions envisioned by Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru from any political interference.

"In opposing the HRD Ministry's test, we are not trying to achieve elitist status but protect the sanctity of academic freedom granted to these institutions by an act of Parliament (Institutes of Technology Act, 1961) and ensure that only the best students get selected by a fair process," he said.

Sibal had on May 28 announced that from 2013, aspiring candidates for IITs and other central institutes like NITs and IIITs will have to sit under a new format of common entrance test, which will also take the plus-two board results into consideration.

The Minister had claimed that it was approved without dissent at a council consisting of the IITs, the IIITs and the NITs.

Filed On: Jun 12, 2012 18:33 IST                      ,  Edited On: Jun 12, 2012 18:33 I