A joint meeting of councils of IITs, NITs and IIITs has come up with two different patterns of admission to undergraduate engineering programmes, even while emphasising weightage for performance in Class XII board exams.
Nearly two-and-half years after being first considered, the proposed national common entrance exam for admission to undergraduate engineering programmes in the country continues to be a contentious issue.
The Joint Meeting of Councils of IITs, NITs and IIITs held under the chairmanship of Union Minister for Human Resource Development Kapil Sibal has come up with two different patterns of admissions — one for IITs and the other for all other Centrally-funded institutions.
A strong body of opinion amongst the members of the council was that the importance of the schooling system has to be revived in larger public interest by giving due weightage to the performance of students in Class XII Board examinations and at the same time maintain the credibility and integrity of admissions to higher institutes of technical education.
As per the present proposal, a Joint Entrance Examination (JEE) for admission to undergraduate programmes in engineering would be conducted in two parts — JEE-Main and JEE-Advanced.
For IITs, the Class XII Board/equivalent marks normalised on percentile basis through an appropriate formula plus the marks obtained in JEE-Main, with equal weightage, would be used for purpose of gating/screening.
Only a fixed number of candidates (five times the number of the seats for admission in the IIT system or a pre-fixed cut-off) screened on the basis of cumulative score of normalised school board marks and JEE-Main exam would be eligible to be considered for admission.
The ranking for admission to undergraduate programmes in IITs would be based entirely on the performance in JEE-Advanced exam from amongst the candidates screened through this process. (JEE-Main tests will have multiple choice objective type paper whereas the nature and modalities of the JEE-Advanced will be determined by the joint admission board of IITs).
For all other Centrally-funded institutions, there would be 40 per cent weightage performance in school board marks normalised on percentile basis through an appropriate formula, 30 per cent weightage for performance in JEE-Main and 30 per cent weightage in JEE-Advanced and a combined merit accordingly.
The proposed changes are expected to be effective from the year 2013.
However, the views of the IIT Senates clearly indicate that majority of the IITs are for the current practice to continue in 2013, with five out of seven voting for the present system of admission for the next academic year also. While IIT-Madras had nothing to comment, the views of IIT-Roorkee were not made clear.
Six out of seven IITs agreed to use National Common Exam as a screening test from 2014. Similarly, six out of seven IITs have decided to conduct their own test to select candidates from the screeened list from the national test. They are not for adding board performance in final JEE rankings of IITs. The consensus was that the mechanism of overall inclusion of board performance could be considered only for the cut-off or for the screening. IITs are likely to carry out a detailed analysis of the board data to decide on whether to use board marks as cut-off or as part of the initial screening process.
According to the minutes of the Meeting of Council of IITs, it is clear that IIT-Bombay wants to retain the present system with minor modifications and IIT-Kanpur seeking substantial modification to the proposal. (Now, IIT-Kanpur Senate has resolved to go it alone.) Other IITs gave a qualified support to the proposal. All India IIT Faculty Federation has also asked the MHRD to uphold the collective majority views of various IIT Senates.
Autonomy to States
After the Joint Meeting of Councils of IITs, NITs and IIITs, the MHRD has decided that the States would have the freedom to join in the process and have the autonomy to determine their own relative weightages to normalised Class XII Board marks, performance in JEE-Main and JEE-Advanced.
This has given a breather to States like Tamil Nadu where no entrance test is being conducted for admission to professional courses, including engineering, to ensure rural students gain more access to higher education. “Now, the States have three options. Join the MHRD's national entrance exam or conduct their own tests or like in Tamil Nadu, no tests,” says T.S. Sridhar, Secretary, Higher Education.
Students have the option, as before, to appear in JEE for admission to IITs.
Keywords: national common entrance exam, Joint Entrance Examination, National Common Exam, professional courses, higher education
The concept of having common entrance exam (cee) was really very nice and useful . It will bring a great standard in all the students . But these IIT institutes are objecting this as they were taking this as a prestigious issue . But withdrawing the idea of (cce) will be a great fault .
Few days ago, a buzz was created by HRD minister Mr. Kapil Sibbal that
after conducting several rounds of meeting with different educational
and institutional bodies, a consensus has been achieved regarding
single entrance test.But soon the opposition of IIT Kanpur senate and
other IITs points towards the fact that Mr. Sibbal is in hurry to
introduce the new system without even taking IITs in favour.I think
Mr. Sibbal should not be so obstinate in taking decisions.If it takes
one more year to draft the new system,there is no harm in this.It is a
national issue so it should be resolved by considering the interest of
vast multitude of students.
Matter needs detail discussion with IIT teachers and JEE members along with distinguish educationist if any changes are required.
Kapil Sibal hide tactical information by doping but it is not difficult to find the reality. Don't destroy IIT system.In society,the rich and strong get what they want by the law of the contract,and power of the authorities to change the rules or violate them at will.
The concept of having common entrance text is appreciable,through this system every student who feel stress in preparing different competitive examinations are benefited .Having this type of system a student can prepare well for the text and perform well ,the indian government take good decision by proposing this type of system.
I also think the aim of eliminating the stress will not be achieved.
Also high percentage in 12+2 does not necessarily give you a student
with engineering capabilities.
Instead of hammering the upper level government must check the quality
of education imparted at primary and middle level.
Sir see how children are treated in government school, what is the
attitude of their teachers, a 6th class student of costly private school
is far ahead than 8th class student 7. I invite you to visit rural parts
of mp.
Small children have no voting rights, which implies they don't deserve
government attention.
Having country widecommon entrance test is not a good idea. Good is is that which
promotes variety.There are variety of flowers, fruits. Nature isfull of variety.
There can be several alternatives for test for different institutes.If variety of
tests are stopped, monotomy results.
The idea ofHRDis no good.
It is in fitness that common entrance test is being rejectted from IITs.
Having a common entrance exam for professional admissions makes the most sense.
It is stressful for school students to prepare for so many different entrance exams in
addition to focussing on their school curriculum. IITs should not be stubborn about
maintaining status quo. Instead if they have constructive feedback on coming up
with a standardized process, they should offer that.
The main reason given by Mr. Kapil Sibal to end the current process
for admissions in various IITs, NITs and other institutes was making
admission process less stressful. Therefore he advised a single exam.
But, eventually, it turns out that the no of exams are not going down,
it's more or less the same. Adding to that, the benefit of multiple
exam of having option to perform in other exam if someone can not
perform in one is also vanished in proposed process. That makes,
according to me, these exams more stressful.
And when, we are getting no benefits by proposed process, then whats
the point to change the already existing process which has been so
successful in finding young minds and nurturing them to successful
graduates.
Giving weightage to board exam results would no doubt give importance to knowledge being imparted at school but at the same time, it would increase the burden on students who would be forced to excel in both the
board examination and the entrance examinations.Moreover the plan of
some of the engineering institutes to conduct their own tests or to have
different method of selection could leave the students more baffled.
How many engineers from indian institute of technologie are working in their fields/industry?should not the
The Plus Two marks scored from State Educational Boards or CBSE or ICSE should not be taken into account for any National Entrance Test. It is difficult to evaluate or normalise the marks of various streams of education through a satisfactory formula. It will ultimately lead to the court cases. For Example, this year in the State of Tamil Nadu in Plus Two level examination, the pass percentage was 89, while it was 90% in CBSE and 55% in Karnataka PUC Board. What would be the yardstick for normalisation ? Unless and until a uniform syllabus for all the State and Central Boards and a single question paper in each subject for the entire India is adopted, Mr.Sibal's idea is unworkable. Mr.Sibal knows fully well this cannot materialise in India as the subject of "Education" is in the concurrent list of the Constitution. Being a wise lawyer, Mr.Sibal is trying to divert the attention of the Nation from the focus on Congress Party and its failures in so many failures and flip flops.
The concept of a common entrance exam for admission is almost universal. Why is the
government trying to create a peculiar concotion of exams with different weightage for
admission purposes? Since we have different board exams, a common entrance test
serves as a normalised evaluation. Our students who wish to study abroad take exams like
GRE, GMAT, SAT etc where nobody can insist that their board exams must also be given a
certain weightage. The government is only playing politics in education by playing the urban
versus rural card to justify a muddled criteria for admission.
The concept of a common entrance exam for admission is almost universal. Why is the
government trying to create a peculiar concotion of exams with different weightage for
admission purposes? Since we have different board exams, a common entrance test
serves as a normalised evaluation. Our students who wish to study abroad take exams like
GRE, GMAT, SAT etc where nobody can insist that their board exams must also be given a
certain weightage. The government is only playing politics in education by playing the urban
versus rural card to justify a muddled criteria for admission.
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