Why IITs should oppose the current followed process?

One country one test - understanding the issues. 

Disclaimer: The views expressed are my own and in no way represents the view from any organization or body.

As of now there are many interlinked issues in this proposal as minuted in IIT, NIT and IIIT councils' joint meeting of 28th May 2012. We shall try to take them apart and understand them.

The main problems which has been mentioned as various platforms by HRM, IIT directors etc, in current education system, which are supposed to be addressed by the proposed new entrance examination system, are the following.

1. School education is not taken seriously by students.
2. There are multiplicity of exams. For the admissions, large amount of money, time and other resources are wasted in these exams.
3. There is large coaching industry flourishing.

The objective was to solve all the three issues in one go. In order to solve the problem 2, the natural choice was to reduce the number of examinations which an applicant has to appear in. One extreme is having only one single examination, and the other, having too many examinations. Ideally, we should have somewhere in between number, say four or five. Further, these benchmarking examinations should never be held round the year, as this will lead to disturbance in regular school teaching activities. IIT Council has made both these mistakes in their current proposal - having one single examination, and having it twice a year.

Now, we wanted to increase the value of school education so that every student will take interest in it. So, HRM (Human Resource Minisiter) thought of including it for deciding ranks for admissions to technical institutes. As absolute marks cannot be used, use of percentile ranks was devised. The fundamental assumption behind this is that marks distributions in board are according to the ability of the students. But it can be argued (see Musings of Dheeraj Sanghi), that 90%tile in one board and 90%tile  in another board are not equal. Thus assumption cannot be assumed to correct till is verified by studying the data.

Further, most of the boards (including CBSE) do not enjoy a very high a reputation for thier integrity and honesty in conducting the examinations. It is not important that they have honesty and integrity, but how they are perceived by public. On the other hand, IITs and hence JEE enjoys a much higher level of perceptual honesty and integrity with public. One can do a sample survey and verify this. This is another reason, why inclusion of board marks is not proper. Increasing the value of board marks, also increase the chances of corruption in boards thus will be leading to more undesirable situations. How the level of honesty and integrity will be enhanced, need to be looked at. In the current scenario, this is daunting task for anyone.

The above mechanism of including board marks will also not reduce coaching. As per my point of view, coaching will exist till we have scarcity of good quality resource (IIT seats in this case). Having more and more number of good institutes within reasonable cost is the solution for this problem.

Any academician will agree, if a person gets a admission bypassing a meritorious student, he will not contribute much the academic quality of the institute. In fact, he will add to degradation. Due to reputation of CBSE in comparison to IITs, the chances of manipulation are far higher. Also, in current JEE system, all the persons involved in the examination change almost every year. Thus the persons cannot manipulate the system easily. While in the new administrative structure proposed for one country one exam, same persons will stay for years and thus will be well versed with the system. This makes the system vulnerable to manipulation, unless persons of extreme integrity are are involved. Considering the way the heads are selected for various academic bodies and how they do not dare speaking the truth in front of minister, I do not see any possibility of having such persons involved in the examination process.

Coming to process followed by the HRM while trying to implement this system. Most of the IITs have academic senate which have been given powers to decide on admission process and standards. IIT council is another body which does primarily coordination among all IITs. As per the spirit of act, statutes and ordinances, the proposal should have been sent to senates. This proposal with modificaiton should have gone back and forth between council and senates so that all IIT senates are at same ground after few iterations. Once the consensus is achieved, the senate would have modified their ordinances and new process would have gone for implementation. This is where a blunder by IIT council was made. They thought to just get feedback from senate and then decide. The decision is then thrusted on senates. Their job was coordination and not making this academic decision.

When IIT council have overstepped over the functioning of senate, it is usual for any academician to assume that if it is accepted now, it will form a precedence. Thereafter, even for other minor issues like what to teach and what not to teach, the ministry will interfere via council. Thus the micromanagement of academic will start, thereby killing the academic autonomy. In these situations, it is natural for any academician to assert the autonomy. This is exactly what was done in the senate of IIT Kanpur on 08th June 2012.

The way ahead

Ideally now the chairman, IIT council should understand this delicate balance of power and functional domains of senate and council. He should start this dialogue process so that back and forth movement of working draft of the proposal can happen. Once the convergence is achieved, the council should give the advice which can be then finally discussed by the senate and the resolution to modify the ordinances can be made, leading to implementing a better system.

The council should also choose that the examinations should be conducted by IITs only. IITs can take help of CBSE whenever it is needed. Thus the reputation of entrance examination can be retained.