Come April, the suspense over the new Indian Institute of Technology-Joint Entrance Examination (IIT-JEE) will finally be over. With the deliberations done and reports submitted, IIT directors say a final decision on when to introduce the new pattern of the examination is likely next month.
The wait has been a real cliffhanger, say students and faculty members at IITs and the engineering test-preparation institutes.
“The report was accepted, and since then several discussions have taken place. With regard to the implementation, a lot of details still have to be looked into. A formal notifications will come in by April. We cannot keep the younger generation guessing for too long,” said an IIT director.
Last year, the IIT council accepted the recommendations of the
T Ramaswami Committee report on JEE reforms, which proposed a single entrance test for all engineering colleges — including IITs, National Institutes of Technology and private institutions.
According to the Chandy Committee report that established a correlation between school performance and IIT performance, it was concurred that students were doing better in the school.
More From This Section
IIT directors says due to the culture of coaching classes, schooling system has been thrown out of the window. So much so that students do not attend schools because of the pressure of such training programmes.
Industry experts feel that exams like IIT-JEE have been causing difficulties at the school level, as the focus has been shifting from school education to IIT-JEE exam. Students do not attend schools and instead join coaching institutes.
“Today school teaching and Board exams are neglected due to pressure of coaching classes. Students focus only on learning physics, chemistry and biology and don’t learn about geography or English, which are the subjects taught in schools. The ministry has therefore convinced the IITs to consider school education in IIT-JEE,” says Gautam Barua, director, IIT Guwahati.
Minister for Human Resource Development, Kapil Sibal, has maintained that the exams will be called JEE only, and the IIT faculty will set the papers.
“School board exam marks (Class XII) will be given weightage, and that is likely to be about 40 per cent. The new system will help the premier institutes get better students,” Sibal had said last month. He added that with the coaching system dominating, students were ignoring board exams and were focusing only on coaching for the JEE.
Faculty members unhappy
Kapil Sibal has maintained that the new format of exams for entrance to the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) will ensure brighter students getting through to the prestigious institutions. But the IIT faculty is not convinced.
The All India IIT Faculty Federation (AIIITFF) says admission to the IITs, as per the IIT Act, is a function of the ‘senate’ which was never consulted.
“Reforms in the admissions process is the need of the hour, but you cannot do it without consulting the faculty. We have suggested that the test should be held in such a manner that it acts like a filter. Students who clear the test at the preliminary level can seek admission to other engineering institutions. However, there should be another test only to select students for the IITs,” said Atul Mittal, secretary, AIIITFF.
Faculty members argue that the quality and standard of the education boards in India differ. And hence the formula which the government is proposing has a problem.
Sibal has said that the exam will be held in two parts, mains and advanced. The first part will be an aptitude test, and the second part will check the student’s depth of knowledge.
IIT directors. however, agree that there are several bodies involved — the IIT Council, MHRD and the councils of the Centrally-funded engineering institutes — and to reach a consensus on this issue will take time.
Test-prep institutes wait and watch
Rao IIT is seeing this change as an opportunity for students. ‘Earlier, only students scoring 95 per cent plus would get through. Now, even students scoring 80-85 per cent stand a chance to get into the IITs,” said Chandan Dikshit, marketing head at Rao IIT Academy.
Rao IIT has also hired professors who coach students for MBA examinations. The institute has begun the process of hiring more coaching personnel to teach students the analytical and data interpretation aspects of the exam.
Dikshit informs that parents of the students at Rao IIT Academy are pleased with the decision to have a single examination. “Students are a little confused about the new exam pattern. It will take some time for them to accept it,” Dikshit added.
As students reel under the pressure of preparing for IIT-JEE in addition to keeping up with the syllabus at school, test preparation institutes say they are maintaining status quo.
RK Sharma, senior manager (student welfare) at Resonance, said they were awaiting the exact syllabus of the aptitude test and the advanced test.
Pramod Maheshwari, CEO, Career Point Infosystems, a Kota-based IIT-JEE training institute, said they are in a wait-and-watch mode. Maheshwari had earlier said that given the changes in IIT-JEE pattern, his company will launch a school curriculum coaching division and also look at partnering with schools to train students on campus.
“Seeing the kind of shift the regulatory framework may bring in, we are looking at incorporating some changes in our business model. We are gearing up to open a school curriculum coaching division by next academic year. So far, we have been preparing students for competition examination, but now we have decided to partner with schools and prepare students for board exams too,” said Pramod Maheshwari, chairman and managing director.
IITians protest on social media
The displeasure against the new examination has been brought out in a facebook group led by ex-IIT students, called IITians.org. The group believes that the quality of students will be affected. Moreover, the new exam is untested and may lead to complications, according to the group. “Students and parents will now be at the helm of the coaching institutes. The only uniqueness about IIT is IIT-JEE. Kill that and IIT students will be just normal (and some below normal). Aptitude and not mere book knowledge is very important to become an IITian,” said the founder of the group.
Further, the group has given various calls for protests and class boycott at the IITs. Their aim is to be bring back the status quo to the IIT admission process.