This is my comment on an article published in Business Standard
" Why IIT-Kanpur is wrong "
: http://blogs.business-standard.com/kpathak/2012/06/11/why-iit-kanpur-is-wrong/Lines from the journalist's article are italicized, but to get a feel of the actual article, please read it before proceeding.
Dear Author,
Let us discuss the rhetoric points you have raised.
"I fail to understand the problem IIT alumni associations and IIT faculty have, over the ‘one-nation-one-test’ proposal of the MHRD."
-- yup I accept that you have failed to understand, I am here to explain it to you, hold on.
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How on earth will changes in IIT-JEE dilute the quality of IITs?
”
-- A major percentage of the population at IITs is that of the students (surprise), if the quality of intake of students goes down, the quality of IITs goes down.
“
In my opinion, this is one of the most sensible decisions taken by the MHRD in the past decade.
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-- What about the 27% reservation in IITs by UPA-I, were you not happy at that point of time?
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The whole idea of the test is to facilitate better school education, ease the pressure of writing multiple tests for students and also to some extent, discourage the coaching culture among students.
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--Too many points; lets see them one by one
Better school education ??? Are you kidding me? Is HRD minister starting new schools or bringing in more and better teachers? I never heard that coming.
Only 5 lakh students take IIT-JEE while 12 lakh take AIEEE, and even several other lakhs do not take PCM for +12 and study other subjects.
How is the school education improving?
Ease the pressure of writing multiple tests -- How are you ruling out number of tests? Now we have
one JEE exam for IITs, ISM, IT-BHU, IISERs,
one AIEEE for NITs, IIITs and a few other colleges, and
and many more other tests like BITS exam-BITSAT, WB-JEE, Manipal, VIT etc. etc.
HRD minister is not clear on what happens to AIEEE , now that NITs and IIITs are out of it.
Case I - AIEEE continues for other colleges -- now that the best of colleges in AIEEE - NITs and IIITs- are out, AIEEE is a lack-luster test, students will have to take tests for other private colleges to be safe. In th minimum case number of tests a student takes (1JEE + 1AIEEE = 2 JEEs) remains the same.
Case II - AIEEE is scrapped. the number of tests an average student has to take, increases A LOT.
So in either case, the number of tests either remains the same, or increases.
discourage the coaching culture among students --- well, you yourself do not agree with this and have countered it later, so you have eased the my burden of opposing it.
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But clearly the alumni association and faculty federation have not understood this.
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-- Unlike most people having an opinion on the matter, alumni association and faculty federation breathe the IIT spirit day in day out. If you are not ready to hear the words of the people who are affected
you are treating them the same way as the earlier WB government treated the people at Singur.
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Besides, if the directors of IITs have agreed, I see no reason why the faculty federation should be opposing it.
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--Its a farce claim that the IIT directors have agreed to the government's proposal. Well, it isn't a proposal anymore and has been forced upon us already.
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And the latest move by IIT-Kanpur to hold its own examination is nothing but an attempt to creating an elite society!
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-- what's wrong in creating an elite society. Are you introducing the new pattern so that you may be able to look down upon the IITs?
I took the JEE exam because I had reverence for it, the idea of being among that elite was what motivated me. Why do want to want to take that away from all the aspirers?
And membership to this elite community is very democratic, every student after completing 12th has this opportunity ( despite the minimal eligibility criteria).
Yes it might be undemocratic in the sense that only a miniscule percentage can get there , but the playing field is level, so please don't complain.
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What is the point in coming up with the idea of a single national test when every institute wants to hold its own test?
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-- MOST of the institutes are already having their own tests. All the IITs were combined until a couple of weeks back, HRD is trying to split them.
I still hope that other IITs join the line of Kanpur and there still remains just one exam for the IITs.
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I think the new proposal to conduct two exams JEE mains and JEE advanced is a good way to assess students. Besides, students will be able to concentrate on their school education also considering weightage will be given to marks gained in school.
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-- JEE mains and JEE advanced are a good way of assessing the students, I agree. IIT exams are still taken in two parts on the same day. But giving weightage to HIgh School marks is incorrect. First each of the state boards differs in the grades/marks they give. Plus not only is there no statistics present to normalize them , there's no data available at all.
Some 30-40% is being considered for the 12th class grades, no student from Bihar Board should now expect to get into IITs because a lot more students in CBSE are already getting 95+ %. IITs cannot rest their entrance criteria on such whimsical board marks.
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IIT coaching centres however, have already begun incorporating the school syllabus in their curriculum.
Not only that, the syllabus which schools finish in one year, these coaching institutes will be finishing in flat three months!
So it’s anyone’s guess how much will these students actually absorb.
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-- Thanks, there's nothing to counter in here.
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It is appalling to see how these associations are not facilitating a change that will be good for students. Not every student has the finances to buy forms for 10 different tests. Not everyone can seek coaching from institutes to crack the test.
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-- I have already pointed out how the number of tests are not going down. So this point should be void yet again.
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At this point I can’t help but remember the comment made by Infosys Technologies founder, N R Narayana Murthy last year.
“Thanks to coaching classes, the quality of students entering IITs has gone lower and lower. Save the top 20 per cent who crack the tough IIT entrance exam and can stand among the best anywhere in the world, the quality of the remaining 80 per cent of students leaves much to be desired,” Murthy had said.
Are IITs really looking at improving the quality of students they want to have?
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-- That's what we are saying, do not make us downgrade the quality of students any more. I didn't go for any coaching classes but I do not have any disrespect for the one who did. They are ones who are epitome of what hard work can do. They live away from home for 2 years studying 15-16 hours a day to achieve their dreams. Yes, that was Dr. Murthy's opinion but I don't think there's any data to show that students who came from coaching institutes were statistically under-performers compared to un-coached guys.
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If the IITs have their way, coaching institutes may now begin promoting classes in the name of specific IITs. And probably have some faculty members from these IITs on board to add weight to their claims.
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-- Yup, lets not try to split the IITs, lets not try to take away their autonomy.
Another important issue that is being overlooked is that the decision is going to be detrimental to the colleges that are taking in students from the extended JEE list. This includes colleges of high esteem like IISERs. Being institutes of sciences rather than engineering many more students will now go for NITs rather than IISERs. At 12th class level, Indian training system hardly gives them the perspective to understand the importance of kind of work being done at IISERs. One of the reasons for students opting for a degree in Science at IISER rather than NITs is that their entrance would be due to their efforts put in for JEE rather than something else (The elite idea that we discussed earlier). Now that everything will be from the same exam, IISERs all the best!
What irks me most about these changes are the HRD minster captioning it as "One India One Exam". There are still several exams for other fields like medical, law, architecture, etc etc. There are several other exams for the engineering itself.
This hue of some sort of "unity" is paradoxical to the effects that the decision is going to cause. I am tired by now and will dissect HRD minister's claims of "30-35 exams that a student has to take, comparison to SAT for Harvard and Stanford etc etc" in another post.
I would suggest authors to refrain from writing articles that they do not have expertise on. No one can stop them from writing, given their freedom of speech, but it gives a bad taste to the reader. Or try to have some level of expertise, do your research and then write an article on a sensitive issue.
Cheers
