The All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) would reach out to State governments to seek their support for conducting a common engineering entrance examination across the country, its chairman Anil Dattatraya Sahasrabudhe said here on Saturday.
Speaking to reporters on the sidelines of the 14th convocation of the National Institute of Technology, Tiruchi, Mr. Sahasrabudhe said the AICTE had not dropped its proposal for a common entrance examination for engineering admissions. “Candidates vying for admission in select institutions are being forced to spend a lot of energy and money on writing examinations conducted by various technical institutions. Thousands of students are being forced to visit far-away States to take the entrance tests for getting admission in specific institutes and universities. Hence, the AICTE had floated the idea of conducting a common entrance test across the country for all engineering institutes, along the lines of the Joint Entrance Examination,” he said.
Mr. Sahasrabudhe said the AICTE had, so far, conducted two meetings with representatives of State governments. It had written to them on the importance of conducting a common entrance examination. However, some States had opposed the idea, the same way they opposed the National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test. Hence, the AICTE would renew its efforts to take the State governments on board. He insisted that the proposed examination would in no way affect the reservation policy of the States. Each State had a different reservation policy. The common entrance examination was nothing to do with the reservation system. It was aimed at improving the quality of technical education. The eligible candidates would automatically get admission in their respective States, he said.
‘No coercion’
Mr. Sahasrabudhe made it clear that he was against coercing States into extending their support to the proposal. Instead, the AICTE would make efforts to convince the States by pointing out the advantages of a common entrance examination.
Stating that the current examination system of technical institutes across the country was not according enough importance to testing the practical knowledge of the students, the AICTE chairman said the apex body had decided to bring reforms to engineering examinations.
It had uploaded model questions on its website to seek the opinions of students, teachers and employers.
