‘Coaching centres help you work the system’

Shashi H Gulhati is a former professor of IIT, Delhi and author of The IITs: Slumping or Soaring? He spoke to DNA about whether HRD minister’s threat to diminish the importance of coaching classes for IITs makes any sense. Excerpts:

What do you say to Kapil Sibal’s suggestion that coaching centres should be marginalised by putting greater emphasis on high school results for the IIT entrance process?
First of all, we need to ask: why do coaching centres exist? Every parent wants that extra edge for his child and you can’t blame the method they use to secure this. In their early avatar, these classes provided students this edge. Now there are a huge number of IIT aspirants, and there are not enough seats to fulfill the demand. So from just playing a supporting role, these classes have gone on to become more demanding, more time-consuming, and more expensive. Now it is no longer enough to put in some hours during class XII, you start at coaching centres in Class IX itself.

So, you’re saying coaching centres can’t be wished away from the market?
They just cater to the existing demand. Suppose, tomorrow it turns out that high school marks have to be high for IIT entrance, they will set up classes to coach students to get those scores! You cannot restrain private enterprise in a country where exam results are given such overwhelming emphasis. What coaching classes do is to make sure you understand the system and operate it to your advantage. High school students, no matter how brilliant, do not understand the system, let alone ways to beat it.

The IIT-JEE has been reduced to a code that has to be cracked, isn’t that a tragedy?
When the IITs were set up, they were meant to not just crank out engineers but students who could contribute to the field of engineering and science. How many of our IIT graduates remain in the field anymore? All these lofty ideals have gone out of the window.

Is it possible to overhaul the admissions system itself so it becomes less predictable?
How does MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) take on undergraduates? They have the same pattern of exams as we do — testing aptitude, and so on. But then MIT also seeks a variety of other inputs from the candidate: school graduation scores, letters of recommendation from teachers, record of extracurricular activities. After collecting information from 10 different sources they evaluate the applicant. Why can’t we do the same here?