The reported proposal of the Union HRD ministry to raise the HSC marks cut-off for applying for the entrance test for the Indian Institutes of Technology (IIT) has found support among IIT directors, staff, and alumni. But the question of how to compare marks awarded by various state and central education boards remains unresolved.
Until the early 1960s, remembers Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Kanpur director Sanjay Dhanade, board toppers were admitted to IITs directly. “This showed the respect and importance associated with the school education system,” he says.
The situation today is different and Dhanade agrees that the question of students not attending schools and giving excessive importance to entrance tests like the JEE (Joint Entrance Examination) is something that needs to be addressed.
On Monday, Union HRD minister Kapil Sibal had mooted a proposal to insist on at least 80% marks at the HSC examination to allow a student to appear for the IIT-JEE. This, he said, would also check the proliferation of IIT coaching centres. Sibal on Tuesday refuted that he made such comments saying that the IITs could decide on admission criteria.
Referring to the committee which has been set up to look at rationalising the JEE and examine ways to make the Std XII exams more meaningful, IIT Guwahati director Gautam Barua said: “There are 29 boards in the country and there has to be some normalisation. Several possibilities were discussed on Monday.”
Bharat Seth, a member of the IIT Bombay faculty, said the “coaching class culture” is unhelpful and prepares students to master exams without understanding the fundamentals. “We need a system which doesn’t make students dependent on these classes,” he said.
R Natarajan, former director of IIT Madras, shared this opinion. “Coaching classes give undue advantage to a small group of students who can afford this special training,” he said. “I believe organisations running such classes make more money than the combined budgets of the IITs. With more emphasis on coaching classes for IIT entrance exams, the focus shifts from the Std XII boards.”
According to Natarajan, there is a need to raise the qualifying standards for applying to the IITs. “Students will be motivated to perform better and we will send a higher quality of people to the IITs,” he said.
But Ajit Ranade, an alumnus of IIT Bombay, said a single policy cannot solve the problem of students focusing exclusively on entrance exams. “It indicates that that the number of seats available is still too small as compared to the number of aspirants,” he said. “The biggest challenge is to see how to increase seats without diluting the quality of IIT education.”
SN Upadhyay, director of the Institute of Technology, Banaras Hindu University, said the government needs to look at and reform the school and high school education systems across states and in rural areas.
(With inputs from D Ram Raj)
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