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

357 - Senate meeting on reforms likely to be held on June 27 - Hindustan Times

Senate meeting on reforms likely to be held on June 27

Bhavya Dore, Hindustan Times
Mumbai, June 15, 2012

The senate of the Indian Institute of Technology-Bombay (IIT-B) is expected to meet on June 27 at a special meeting to discuss the contentious issue of the Joint Entrance Exam (JEE) reforms from next year. Reforms, which include using board exam marks in a first level of screening and having a single engineering admission test, were announced by the human resources development ministry last month.

The IIT-B senate members will debate and vote on the IIT council’s decision on whether to adopt the reforms after the institute’s director Devang Khakhar gives his final approval for the date. “The meeting will most likely be on June 27. The director had earlier indicated he would be free during this week,” said a faculty member on Tuesday.

IIT-Kanpur had passed a resolution last week, opting for its own admission test following displeasure with the new test format. Next year’s two-step JEE will be conducted by the Central Board of Secondary Education, not the IITs.
IIT-B, which has yet to make a stand on the issue, had delayed the meeting as the campus was shut for the holidays.

The IIT-B senate had passed a resolution in March, opposing the reforms on various grounds. In May, an internal committee forwarded a proposal to remove board exams from the equation, suggesting a two-stage screening process.

In the mean time, an article, due to appear in the forthcoming issue of scientific journal Current Science, by an IIT-B faculty member has flayed the reforms.
“Institutions should have the freedom to use their own criteria, duly generated from their internal debates and from suitably empowered academic senates or councils, for admission,” writes Anurag Mehra in the Current Science piece.

“The government should therefore refrain from enforcing ideas, such as a “single, national admission test”, that affect institutional academic autonomy and mandates.”

IIT-B director Devang Khakhar denied a date had been set for the meeting and said there was no update on the issue.

     

279 - What's the hurry for CET: IIT faculty - Samay Live

What's the hurry for CET: IIT faculty

Upset over the common entrance test to Indian Institutes of Technology, the national body of IIT faculty asked why the government was in such a hurry to start the new format.


"They have not done their homework, they are still not able to get the marks from all boards and normalise it. If they cannot do it now, how will they do it next year," IIT Faculty Federation President Sanjeev Sanghi told IANS.

"It does not reduce multiplicity of the exams, it does not do away with coaching," he said.

"We want to ask what is the hurry with 2013?"

Sanghi, who heads the national body of IIT teachers which is leading the battle against the new format along with IIT alumni associations, said representatives from all Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) are attempting to meet the prime minister and take up the issue with him.

On a day when professors from IIT Kanpur wrote to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, Sanghi said the senate of all IITs were against the new format.

"All of us will meet the prime minister," he said.

The developments come after IIT Kanpur announced Friday that it will hold a separate entrance test for admissions from 2013, rebelling against the joint entrance test. Senates of other IITs, prominently IITs at Delhi, Kharagpur and Bombay have also expressed their protest against the new format.

However, Director of IIT Delhi R.K. Shevgaonkar, IIT Bombay Director Devang Khakhar, along with IIT-Kharagpur's Damodar Acharya, and IIT Guwahati director Gautam Barua were reported to be supporting the new format.

"We stand by our decision to go through the CET route from next year onwards and there is no deviation from the same," Shevgaonkar was quoted in a report.

Sanghi, however, said: "Directors cannot overrule the senate."

According to sources, the minutes of meeting of the senate of IIT Kharagpur showed the senate was against the new format. Similar was the case with IIT Guwahati.

In case of IIT Delhi also, the senate and professors are against the new format, however, a dissent was not recorded by the director in the meeting with the HRD minister, says a faculty member.

"Why is it so that while the senates are against this format, the directors did not register their dissent," a professor of IIT Delhi questioned.

The new format merges IIT-JEE with AIEEE, and also includes a fixed weightage from school board exam.

252 - IIT Kanpur's move legally unsustainable, say IITs - Business Standard

IIT Kanpur's move legally unsustainable, say IITs
Kalpana Pathak / Mumbai Jun 11, 2012, 00:31 IST

The Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Kanpur, may have gone ahead and taken a bold step, but at the end, it may find itself fighting a lonely battle.

IIT Kanpur, unhappy with the ministry of human resource development’s move on holding one common engineering entrance examination for NITs, IITs and IIITs, last week decided to hold its own examination next year. No IIT has formally declared it will join IIT Kanpur in its move.

Other IITs say, what IIT Kanpur has done is legally unsustainable. And, it is unlikely that they will join IIT Kanpur in its movement.

Besides, they say the issue is not so serious that IIT Kanpur had to take such a drastic step.

“IIT Kanpur’s resolution does not hold water. Legally, IIT Kanpur cannot separate itself from JEE (the joint entrance examination). As according to the ordinance, part of the IIT Act, admissions to the undergraduate programmes will be governed by the JEE organised by all the IITs together,” said a professor from IIT Roorkee who was involved in framing its statutes.

To give IIT Kanpur’s resolution a legal standing, the institute will first have to amend the ordinance and seek approval from the board of governors (BoG).

“IIT Bombay will not join them. The council has decided on a particular course of action and IIT Bombay is supporting it,” said Devang Khakhar, director, IIT Bombay.

IIT Guwahati too said it will not join IIT Kanpur. “The resolution by itself has no legal standing. IIT Kanpur will have to modify their ordinance and then take an approval from the BoG,” said Gautam Barua, director, IIT Guwahati.

Under the IIT Act, there are statutes. Under the statutes, ordinances are listed, which are to be framed by the Senate and finally need an approval seal of the board of governors.

Faculty members and IIT directors whom Business Standard spoke to said they are not clear on the issues the alumni associations and All India IIT Faculty Federation (AIIITFF) have with the new pattern.

While a few members of the dissenting group have objected to the new pattern altogether, others agree with the pattern but want the examination to be in place from 2014, instead of 2013 as suggested by the MHRD.

“I feel that MHRD’s decision is not bad. It’s just that the IITs need some time to prepare themselves, so they want the exams from 2014,” said a faculty member from IIT Kharagpur.

“What is the objection with the new format? It is a good compromise we came up with. The formula was suggested by IIT Madras and it was the best middle path we could find,” said Barua.

“We will want that autonomy be maintained and that the Senates should have a consensus which is acceptable by all. It’s not that you can over-ride what the Senates say,” said Ashok Kalbag, Secretary General, Pan IIT Alumni Association, which has been rather silent on this issue.