Archive for the ‘Admission in Engineering Colleges’ Category
Engineering colleges in Karnataka offer freebies to attract students
The college campus wears a somewhat deserted look even during lunch hours. The classrooms are half empty. In one of the classrooms, a teacher stands at the front presiding over a bunch of unusually quiet students. Once in a while, students raise their hands to ask questions, breaking the monotony. This scene from an engineering college on Bangalore’s outskirts can be replicated and applied to many of the hundreds of engineering colleges across Karnataka that are scrambling to fill vacant classroom seats and in their struggle for survival are resorting to tactics never used before—offering freebies such as discounted fees, more scholarships and free hostel to attract students.
Placement heads and principals of a number of engineering colleges conceded the magnitude of the problem and the desperate tactics being undertaken, with students choosing to stay away from these institutes disheartened by the prospect of not landing a job in the country’s $108-billion information technology (IT) sector after graduation.
India trains 1.5 million engineers every year, according to an April research report by Kotak Institutional Equities. But only about 150,000 of them will get jobs in the IT sector this fiscal year, industry lobby Nasscom has estimated.
“The admission figures are very poor. We couldn’t even get 50% of the total intake enrolled (this year),” said M. Uma Devi, Principal of Achutha Institute of Technology, located in Karnataka’s Chickballapur district. “CET (Common Entrance Test, the engineering entrance test held in Karnataka) seems to hold no value now.” She said Achutha had taken a number of steps, such as scholarships, flexible fee structures and discounted admission fees, to attract more students. The college has reduced its fees to Rs. 20,000 per semester for each course, compared with close to Rs. 40,000 last year.
Like Achutha, hundreds of engineering colleges across Karnataka, mostly the smaller and lesser-known colleges, are offering a number freebies and concessions to students, including more scholarships, free hostel accommodation, discounts and free use of library and other additional facilities, according to dozens of college officials, students and experts tracking the sector.
According to a July report in The Hindu newspaper, nearly 80,000 out of about 200,000 engineering college seats are vacant in Tamil Nadu. In Andhra Pradesh, which has the most number of engineering colleges in South India, the figure is even higher at over 100,000 seats, while Karnataka has around 20,000 vacant engineering seats, according to people directly familiar with the development, who requested anonymity. State-level engineering admission authorities in Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka could not be reached immediately to confirm these figures.
“The problem we face is that the big IT companies don’t look at the II or III tier colleges for placements—they only look at the top colleges,” said Vandana Yadav, Placement Director at SCT Institute of Technology in Bangalore, which has an average intake of 60-70% of their total capacity in each batch. “And that can be demoralising for students at a college like ours.” SCT has extended benefits such as free books, free access to the college’s digital library and reduced hostel fees, Yadav said. “I don’t think such steps will help majorly. Given the slowdown in the job market, how will it make a difference?” said an 18-year-old first-year aeronautics student at SCT who did not want to be named.
The plight faced by most of these colleges is symptomatic of a larger and deeper crisis facing the country’s engineering populace—lower hiring in the face of lower demand for the country’s top technology firms, which over the years built large, plush campuses to house and train the hundreds of engineering graduates they mass-recruited from colleges across the country. Last month, Nasscom said it expected IT hiring this year to drop by up to 17% to 150,000, mainly due to an increased push towards automation and lower attrition in the sector. In 2008, the Indian IT sector hired 341,000 freshers, according to Nasscom.
“India faces a unique situation where some institutes (IITs, IIMs, etc) are intensely contested, while a large number of recently opened institutes struggle to fill seats,” said analysts Akhilesh Tilotia and Kawaljeet Saluja of Kotak Institutional Equities in their April report. “Across India less than four-fifths of the capacity is used and this spare capacity is unevenly distributed. It is not surprising that over the last couple of years, anecdotes and instances of ‘capitation fees’ at engineering colleges are not heard as much as they were earlier.” According to figures and estimates provided by the All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) and Kotak, on an average barely 78% of the 1.5 million engineering seats across the country are filled.
GSS Institute of Technology in Bangalore, too, is handing out discounts to students, said a student who did not want to be named as he didn’t want to upset the college authorities. GSSIT’s Principal Vidyashankar B.V. initially said the college extended discounts and scholarships only to students from poor backgrounds, but eventually conceded that the move was also aimed at filling up college seats.
Other second-rung engineering colleges that are struggling with huge vacancies include Nadgir Institute of Engineering and Technology, Islamiah Institute of Technology, and Bangalore Technological Institute, according to students and people familiar with the matter who requested anonymity. These and another half a dozen colleges contacted for this article conceded that they were operating classes with a strength of 50-60%, but declined to comment on whether they were offering discounts to students. H.S. Nanda, Principal of Bangalore Technological Institute, declined to comment on whether the college had offered discounts to students who were admitted this year, saying that “the management will take that decision”.
“What’s happening now is that the moment you get an engineering seat you negotiate on the fee—that is happening now. Many colleges have started handing out 20-30% discounts or they’ll give you one full year of hostel free,” said Vivek Kulkarni, former IT secretary in the Karnataka government, and founder of Brickwork India, a credit rating agency. “And this has been happening a lot in the newer colleges that have come up.”
According to experts tracking the sector, none of the engineering colleges outside the rank of the top 40 in Karnataka are running at full capacity and hence are being forced to extend freebies to students. “In Andhra (Pradesh), this has been a phenomena for the last 2-3 years or so—in Karnataka, this has become rampant this year,” said Amit Bansal, Founder and Chief Executive of PurpleLeap, which offers training programmes at engineering institutes to improve the quality of education. “Significant discounts on first year fees is a very common tool that is being used—if you look at these colleges, at 50% intake, they’re breaking even— not losing money. If you start falling below that number, you go into the red.”
“Also, getting additional seats from AICTE has become much easier for colleges—so every college has gone ahead and increased their capacity,” added Bansal of PurpleLeap, which has conducted a study at more than 200 engineering colleges across Karnataka to assess the quality of education and employability of the students.
On top of that, freshers’ salaries at top Indian IT firms have remained stagnant the past 4-5 years and not kept pace with the increase in fees charged by engineering colleges. “It’s not surprising to see this happen now—there’s a complete mismatch between the kind of fees the colleges charge and the kind of job opportunities that are available right now. It’s just not sustainable,” said Narendar Pani, Professor at the School of Social Sciences at the National Institute of Advanced Studies.
Source: Mint, September 17, 2013
Spurt in demand for PG engineering courses
Contrary to popular perception, the engineering education segment seems to be doing well. In the past year, the number of seats in postgraduate (PG) engineering institutes has swelled 160 per cent and there is a 100 per cent year-on-year growth in the number of new PG engineering institutes.
According to data by the All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE), the country’s technical education regulator, as many as 888 seats were added in 2012-13, compared to 342 in the previous year.
Ten postgraduate institutes were opened in 2012-13, against five last year. The new institutes were opened in Andhra Pradesh, Haryana, Maharashtra and Uttar Pradesh, which got two new PG engineering institutes each, and Kerala, where one institute was opened.
Industry observers say the sudden expansion in PG engineering seats is to meet the spurt in the number of students applying for such courses as numerous faculty vacancies exist across engineering colleges in these states.
In Andhra Pradesh, for instance, as many as 71,045 students applied for the PG Engineering Common Entrance Examination (PGECET) this year against 36,000 students a year ago. Besides, according to a new AICTE directive, faculty at engineering should have the minimum qualification of a postgraduate degree. Until last year, these teaching posts were largely filled with B Tech graduates.
According to industry experts, the number of students opting for postgraduate studies had come down by nearly 50 per cent over the past two decades, resulting in an acute faculty shortage in a number of education institutions. In the next academic year, in Andhra Pradesh alone, more than 700 engineering colleges will have about 70,000 posts to fill.
The new-found interest in PG engineering education is also due to the fact that from next year, even private engineering colleges will offer the sixth pay commission salaries for teaching positions. This means a basic salary of Rs. 36,000 at the entry level.
On the other hand, five PG engineering colleges shut down in 2012-13, against seven in 2011-12. The seat loss due to this stood at 342 in 2012-13, compare to 576 in 2011-12.
The Flip Side
It is a different picture for management education and under-graduate engineering. In 2012-13, the number of management institutes opened were 82, compared to 146 last year — adding 7,740 seats to the pool against 14,340 seats last year.
The number of management institutes closed this year stood at 101 against 124 last year. The number of seats lost this, however, were 6,090 against 5,602 last year.
“Opening and closing of institutes has become a game. Approval of institutes has become a racket in the country and AICTE needs to go beyond its fascination for approving management and engineering institutions left, right and centre,” says the director of a Delhi-based B-school ranked among top 10 B-schools in the country.
“AICTE’s role is a holistic one. But they are, instead, playing the role of a regulator. AICTE has forgotten its job of making technical education qualitative. AICTE keeps adding seats even when the market does not need more seats. Thus, professional education in the country is suffering,” the B-school director adds.
In the under-graduate engineering segment, about 95 engineering institutes were opened this year, against 178 last year. While the number of institutes shut down this year stood at 12 against 28 last year, the number of seats lost was 2,710 this year against 9,835 last year. The number of seats added in under-graduate engineering stood at 27,060 seats against 51,900 seats in 2011-12.
Source: Business Standard, September 27, 2012
Coaching capital braces for a tough test
At first sight, Kota seems like only a little less glitzy version of Gurgaon, the city near New Delhi known for its gleaming glass-and-chrome office complexes, call centres, shopping malls and residential towers. Kota’s rise has nothing to do with the automobile boom led by Maruti Suzuki India Ltd, which set up its first plant in Gurgaon in the 1980s and paved the way for its transformation into a thriving corporate enclave.
This town in south-western Rajasthan, on the Delhi-Mumbai railway corridor, has been powered almost entirely by education—rather, the business of education. Numerous institutes in the town, known as India’s coaching capital, have sent countless students to some of the country’s most prestigious engineering schools.
Kota’s raison d’etre becomes evident the minute a visitor enters the town. The hoardings and banners that greet visitors don’t feature the latest Bollywood offering; they aren’t about an enticing new consumer product; what they plug are coaching schools. Indeed, the entire ecosystem of Kota—from residential facilities for out-of-town students to the mushrooming high-end showrooms—has been developed around the education business.
All this may be poised to change. A decision by the Centre to move the nation to a single entrance test for admission to engineering colleges across the country, partly to diminish the influence of coaching institutes in preparing students for admission tests, has dealt a blow to the business model of Kota.
The proposed common entrance test will be a national test that aims to reduce the demand for capitation fees that engineering institutes typically command for granting admission just as it will ease the stress on aspiring students, who otherwise have to sit for multiple entrance examinations.
Under the plan, all Central government-funded technical institutes will give 40% weightage to students’ performance in school board examinations and 60% to the scores in the entrance test. In the case of the elite Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs), besides passing the entrance test, a student would also have to finish among the top 20 percentile in the school-leaving examination to qualify for admission.
While until now only the score in the engineering entrance test has mattered, it will become just one more metric in assessing a student for admission, still an important one, although the so-called one-nation, one-test initiative is still mired in confusion. The greater focus on marks in the school-leaving examinations for admission to institutes such as the IITs and the National Institutes of Technology (NITs) has led to a decline in the flow of students to Kota’s coaching schools.
The impact
Along with two dozen engineering degree aspirants, Shivam Sharma is seated on the neatly manicured lawns outside the multi-storey test preparation institute Career Point Ltd. Given that the institute claims a success rate of 70% in sending students to various engineering colleges, Sharma, who has passed his 12th class examination from Agra and came to Kota to join Career Point in July, is understandably nervous about making the cut for admission to engineering colleges.
“I have lost over a month (of preparation) because of the confusion over the entrance exam,” Sharma said with a grimace. “Several of my friends and juniors stayed back” in Agra instead of coming to Kota to join test preparation classes. The change in the requirements for admission has dimmed his chances of entering one of the IITs because Sharma scored just 66% in his class XII board exam. “Like me, many may not get a chance to crack IIT. Giving more emphasis on the board exam too has affected the decision of many to prepare for IITs while they are in the 11th standard,” he said.
Ravit Anand, another engineering degree aspirant,who came to Kota from Ghaziabad on the outskirts of Delhi to prepare for the same entrance examination, agreed. “They have created a mess out of nothing and taken away chances of many students,” Anand said. “Officials could have taken the decision gradually, allowing students to think and prepare for the change with time in hands.” Not surprisingly, the coaching business is already feeling the pinch.
Nearly 100,000 students come to Kota every year from all parts of the country to realize their ambition of entering engineering schools. Every student spends an extra Rs. 8,000-Rs. 14,000 per month to cover their cost of living. Including the coaching fee ranging between Rs. 50,000 and Rs. 85,000, a student ends up paying upwards of Rs. 200,000 a year. Put together, the annual revenue of the coaching business in Kota is roughly around Rs. 20 billion.
The top six institutes in Kota combined employ more than 5,000 people directly, including 1,200 faculty—a fifth of whom have graduated from the IITs. Almost all classrooms are equipped with the latest teaching technology and, in addition, each institute has set up problem-solving desks manned by teachers. “There is a 20% impact on the business. This is significant but it’s out of (our) control…what can you do?,” said Pramod Maheshwari, chief executive and managing director of Career Point Ltd, the first coaching centre to get listed on the stock market.
“The confusion has impacted the flow of students to Kota, especially in the engineering segment,” he said, adding that many 11th grade students were missing this year. Career Point shares have fallen about 40% since 21 February, when Union minister of human resource development Kapil Sibal first announced the single entrance test. The small-cap index of BSE Ltd has fallen nearly 10% in the same period.
Not cramming schools?
P.K. Bansal, chief executive of Bansal Classes, said the authorities in Delhi may believe that coaching centres were spoiling the standards of IITs by ensuring the selection of students with exceptional skills in memorizing lessons rather than in understanding the sciences. “But in reality, we train them so well that they go and excel. We are hardworking teachers, trying our best for making up the loss that the school system was supposed to provide. These are not cramming schools,” he said. He too conceded that there was a perceptible drop in new student arrivals this year, pegging it at 15% at his institute alone.
It is difficult to estimate either the size of the coaching business in Kota or pick the exact point at which it mushroomed into a semi-industry. Legend has it that Kota was at one time a thriving industrial hub that drew a lot of bright engineers; the boom eventually went bust and one retrenched engineer decided to start tutorial classes for aspiring engineering students—the idea clicked and set Kota on its way.
Even foreign institutes such as Etoos Academy Pvt. Ltd., the South Korean test-prep company, were unable to resist the lure of Kota. They too are feeling the pinch. Etoos Academy director Choi Young Joo said the institute had nearly 4,500 students last year; this year it is a little less than 3,500—a contraction of 25%. “It’s a policy decision and we are now devising alternative plans to capture the test-prep market beyond engineering. We are in India for long term,” said Choi.
The town has 129 registered institutes, according to the official website of Kota, though residents estimate the number could be a few times the official figure, given a large number of unregistered coaching schools.
The future
The big question is whether the blow to the coaching capital of India is temporary or permanent. Analysts say the boom days may be over, but coaching classes will continue to have a market unless the government succeeds in reducing the shortcomings in the formal education system. CEO Maheshwari of Career Point, for instance, says the fact that students’ parents are willing to pay for coaching classes on top of the fees they already pay to their regular schools shows “nobody is relying on the school system”.
“The coaching institutes’ existence is an outcome of inefficiency and failure of school system,” he said. “Unfortunately, the government is not accepting this…instead they are blaming the coaching industry.” Shilpa Danodia, a student from Sikar in Rajasthan, says: “You have to improve your standard and an entrance as tough as IIT-JEE (Joint Entrance Exam) or AIEEE (All India Engineering Entrance Examination) needs serious preparation and hand-holding.” Danodia is enrolled at Resonance Eduventures Pvt. Ltd. in Kota.
Which then begets the question as to whether in the interim the change in rules will actually work to the detriment of students based outside of the main metros. While they will not be able to access coaching hubs such as Kota for the usual duration, an alternative coaching infrastructure will take time to emerge locally in other small cities and towns.
Vinod Raina, a member of the Central Advisory Board on Education (CABE), a body that advises the government in policy making, says a reduction in the number of high-stakes entrance tests will reduce the demand for coaching institutes. “Parents fear that unless their kids get coached, they won’t be able to compete. …The reasons are many but coaching is a complete nuisance and should be made illegal,” he said.
Source: Mint, September 10, 2012
Online, offline JEE exam to be held in April next year
The first Joint Engineering Examination (Main) 2013, known so far as as the All India Engineering Entrance Examination (AIEEE) paper I, will be held in April 2013.
The JEE apex board on JEE main and advanced decided that the JEE (main) for BE/ BTech will be held in two modes — offline and online. The offline exam for JEE (main) will be held on April 7, 2013, and the online exam will be held thereafter in April.
According to JEE apex board, the merit list for admission to NITs, IIITs, DTU and other CFTIs will be prepared by giving 40% weightage (suitably normalized) to Class XII or other qualifying examination marks and 60% to the performance in JEE (Main) examination.
The JEE (Main) 2013 will have one three-hour objective-type question paper. The paper will consist of physics, chemistry and mathematics. The paper II will have one question paper consisting of math, aptitude test and drawing test as per past practice of AIEEE. The duration will be three hours.
Source: The Times of India, September 9, 2012
Autonomy of IIT has to be respected, says PM
The All India Indian Institutes of Technology Faculty Federation (AIIITFF) met Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh today at his residence. The meeting comes after two weeks of dissent following the ‘one nation, one test’ proposal announced by the Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD) headed by Kapil Sibal.
The AIIITFF submitted a letter to the PM, opposing the decision of a Joint Entrance Exam (JEE). In the hard-hitting letter, the dissenting body says the autonomy of the IITs must be restored. The letter requests the PM to let the IITs decide whether to accept, change or outrightly rejects the new proposal by the MHRD along with the IIT Council.
The letter also states any changes to the admission process be brought into effect in 2014 or later, stressing the current IIT-JEE and AIEEE must continue in the coming year. The letter written to the PM rejects all reasons given by the MHRD, saying the stress of exams will increase with all students made to take the Common Entrance Test (CET) in the new proposal, the number of tutorials centres are bound to increase and normalisation of marks would need more research to make it a sound idea.
AIIITFF is among other bodies opposing the idea. The minister, though, has maintained that it is a unanimous decision that came about after two years of deliberations.
Source: www.ndtv.com, June 15, 2012
Kapil Sibal trying to persuade deemed universities to adopt new common entrance exam
Protests by the IIT (Indian Institute of Technology) faculty and alumni notwithstanding, the Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD) is reaching out to states and deemed to be universities to consider adopting the new common entrance examination for engineering programmes. HRD minister Kapil Sibal is trying to persuade the 130 deemed universities to accept the “one nation, one examination” principle. The minister will be meeting representatives of the deemed universities on June 25 to discuss this possibility. Most of these universities have engineering colleges.
At present, many of the deemed universities conduct their own entrance examination, while some are part of the All India Engineering Entrance Examination (AIEEE), and some institutes may use scores from state examinations or IIT-JEE (Indian Institute of Technology-Joint Entrance Exam). Either way it means that aspirants to an engineering programme have to appear for multiple examinations.
“While some deemed to be universities admit students to engineering colleges on the basis of the AIEEE scores or state-level engineering exams, in other states, some deemed varsities get together to organise an entrance examination. There are some deemed varsities which also hold individual entrance exams or even admit students on the basis of their Class XII board results. The ministry will discuss with them the possibility of joining the common test,” a senior official said.
Sibal has consistently argued that a common entrance examination would reduce the stress of multiple tests. Given that the new system gives weightage to school board results, it would also restore the importance of school education. Getting the deemed universities to adopt the new common examination would be a big step in the effort to replace multiple tests for admissions to undergraduate engineering courses. “Convincing the deemed universities, especially the private ones to join is a big challenge,” a senior member of a centrally funded technical institution said.
While the IIT Kanpur Senate has rejected the new common test and IIT faculty and alumni continue to protest, several states have already indicated their willingness to adopt the common test for state run engineering institutions. States such as Gujarat, Maharashtra, Haryana, Uttarakhand have indicated that they will adopt the common test for admission in state engineering colleges. States like Bihar and West Bengal are willing to consider it. All states have been requested to inform the ministry by June 30 whether they plan to adopt the common test and if so from which academic session. The meeting will also urge deemed universities to adopt uniform accounting standards in 2013 to bring in transparency regarding accounting and investments.
Source: The Economic Times (Online Edition), June 14, 2012
Will IIT-Delhi go the Kanpur way?
A day after the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT)-Kanpur decided to defy the government’s decision to hold a common entrance examination for all Central engineering institutes by announcing a separate admission test for undergraduate courses, the IIT-Delhi has also called for a Senate meeting to adopt its own admission system.
A meeting of the IIT-Delhi Alumni Association held here on Saturday decided to file a public interest litigation (PIL) petition against the joint entrance examination next week and call upon the senior alumni to use their influence and lawful means in getting the decision reversed. “The meeting applauded the IIT-Kanpur for its decision and reiterated that the Institute Senates were legally empowered to decide and adopt whichever method they wanted to for admissions,” Somnath Bharti, President of the Alumni Association told The Hindu.
However, the prestigious IITs appear to be divided over the Centre’s decision with the IITs at Delhi and Kanpur offering stiff opposition and the remaining five claiming to be on board with the government’s proposal. Criticising the decision taken by the IIT-Kanpur Senate on Friday to hold a separate entrance test, Director of IIT-Guwahati Gautam Barua said he was “surprised” at their “reaction.” “I am sad actually that they have to take this extreme step for such a small matter,” he told a television channel.
“Right now, we are not talking about one common entrance exam. We are basically talking about having a common exam for the NITs, the IITs and the IIITs. Whether this lead to a common exam for everybody, only time will tell,” Mr. Barua said. Professor Damodar Acharya, Director of IIT-Kharagpur, said the institution did not have any objection to the Centre’s move to conduct a common entrance exam for central engineering institutions.
The IIT-Kanpur Senate on Friday described the joint entrance examination “academically and methodically unsound and in violation of the Institutes of Technology Act (1961) and the IIT Kanpur Ordinances [Ordinance 3.2 Admissions]. It also constituted a committee for conducting the JEE 2013 by the IIT-Kanpur. The Undergraduate Admissions Committee will organise the entrance examination and counselling, the resolution said. The committee will coordinate with other IITs to conduct the entrance examination jointly. The Senate resolved to record its forceful dissent of the Council resolution related to JEE. The Senate’s decision has to be endorsed by the Board of Governors and then the IIT Council chaired by the Union Human Resource Development Minister.
However, while the government has not reacted to the developments as the Minister and senior officials are away in the U.S., sources within the Ministry told The Hindu that under the IIT Act, even when regulations of each IIT admissions were to be done, they must be jointly done by all the IITs. Also, under the Act, all matters that are common to all the IITs come under the purview of the Council and not the senate of any one IIT. So the senate resolution is suspect from a legal point of view.
Director of the IIT-Kanpur Sanjay Dhande approved the JEE proposal at the IIT Council, but this was overruled by the Senate. Similar moves are afoot for other IITs, where the Directors have backed the Ministry. Meanwhile, the All-India IIT Faculty Federation has said: “The decision of the government to go ahead with the common entrance test for the IITs is in the gross violation of the IITs’ academic autonomy. We do not understand the intention behind the decision to take the JEE away from the highly successful JEE machinery of the IITs and pass it to some other body.”
Source: The Hindu, June 10 , 2012
IIT-Kharagpur OK with proposed joint entrance exam
Amidst opposition to the proposed Joint Entrance Examination (JEE) for the country’s engineering institutions, mounted by certain Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs), IIT-Kharagpur Director Professor Damodar Acharya on Saturday came out in support of the proposal of Union Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD), stating that the IIT-KGP Senate has no objection to the common entrance examination which is “not very different” from the current examination process.
“So far as the IIT-Kharagpur is concerned, on May 2 this year, we had a meeting of the Senate and the faculty members…where this issue was raised and discussed. What emerged from our discussion is that the proposed examinations JEE (main) and JEE (advanced), the way they are supposed to be conducted, are not very different from the way we are conducting IIT-JEE currently,” Prof. Acharya told journalists at the Institute. He said that the views of the institute’s Senate on two core issues — that the total academic control of the examination should remain with the IITs and Class XII board marks should not be used for the purpose of ranking candidates — have been accepted.
“The academic control of the examination is with the IITs and the school board marks are not considered for admissions to the IITs,” Prof. Acharya said. On being asked about the apprehensions expressed by some institutes that the Centre is trying to control IITs through the examination, Prof. Acharya said, “This apprehension has actually got no basis. This has been discussed at length at the IIT Council, the supreme body which controls all IITs, were in favour of it.” He further added, “This form of JEE can extend its use to all other institutions, if the exam is controlled by the IITs.”
Explaining the similarities between the IIT-JEE entrance examination and the proposed common entrance examination, Prof. Acharya said that the current examination system has 40 per cent questions to test the basic understanding and knowledge of the students in Physics, Chemistry and Mathematics while the remaining 60 per cent relate to ascertaining the analytical and problem-solving skills of the students. He said that in the proposed examination, the JEE (main) will test the basic understanding and knowledge of the subject while JEE (advanced) will test the analytical skills. However, a section of teachers say that they have concerns about the proposal. They claimed that their voice was not properly represented.
Source: The Hindu, June 10, 2012
‘Uncertainty on JEE pattern to affect IIT aspirants next year’
Confusion over the Ministry of Human Resource Development’s (MHRD) plan for an all-inclusive common engineering test is likely to deepen ahead of IITs (Indian Institutes of Technology) senate meetings tentatively scheduled for the third week of June for Delhi and July for Bombay. IIT-Roorkee Director Pradipta Banerji said he and others were concerned about the impact of the ongoing confusion on aspiring candidates. “This uncertainty is extremely unfair to the students who will be sitting for the exam in 2013.” A senior faculty member said it might be too late for the students aiming for engineering entrance next year to re-orient themselves. “If this new format is a disaster it will be because of this confusion and discussion that is putting undue stress on students,” he said.
HRD Minister Kapil Sibal on May 28 had announced that from 2013, aspiring candidates for IITs and other central institutes like NITs (National Institutes of Technology) and IIITs (Indian Institutes of Information Technology) will take a single, reformatted common entrance test. He had said class XII board results would also be factored in. Sibal had claimed it was approved without dissent at the IIT Council meeting and had the backing of the senates of four of the seven IITs. “The council consists of the IITs, the IIITs and the NITs. There was not a single dissent. It was unanimously adopted. Therefore, I went forward,” he had said.
The IIT-Bombay’s senate, which met before the MHRD’s announcement last Monday, had put forth three main recommendations: the new exam must not be rolled out in 2013, that Class XII must not be accounted for and that the JEE (Joint Entrance Exam) must be subjective in nature. “However there is a clear divide between the IIT-B senate and the ministry. We have not yet decided which way the institute will go, but clearly none of our recommendations have been considered,” said a faculty federation member. Vacations are on and with most teachers travelling; the IIT-B senate has decided to convene in early July and take a final call on whether to bow to the ministry’s proposal or to go their own “independent autonomous way”, said a faculty member.
Sources in IIT-Kharagpur senate said that so far there had been no opposition to MHRD’s decision, but the senate may reconsider its decision following the growing opinion against the common test. IIT-Delhi Director R K Shevgaonkar added there would be no difficulty in implementing the new format. Sources said that while not all IIT directors may have agreed with the decision wholeheartedly, now that a final decision has been made, efforts should be made to implement it. There was mixed reaction from the coaching institutes. Though FIIT-JEE Director R L Trikha believes that these developments won’t affect his students adversely, he said that Sibal’s effort for a common exam for engineering colleges had been defeated.
“So far we have not received any queries from the students. This is more because our teaching methodology is pattern proof and so whatever pattern be the exam be the students are comfortable. But the real issue is that Sibal’s dream of one common exam has been defeated. He has managed just to do away with one exam by merging AIEEE with that of the IIT-JEE. What about the dozens of other entrance exams? One IIT senate has already taken a bold step and other may follow soon,” said Trikha, an alumni of IIT-Kanpur.
According to TIME, another coaching centre, there is no confusion and the institute is preparing students as per the MHRD directives for the common entrance test. “Currently the students are not at all concerned with the news that IIT-Kanpur is going to conduct its own entrance test. The news is just 24 hour old and we are preparing the students for last so many months. Moreover, we are convinced that how can a senate of IIT override the decisions of MHRD?” said Vice President, TIME, Ajay Anthony.
Source: The Times of India, June 10, 2012
Sibal’s exam plan splits IITs, may stress out aspirants
The HRD ministry’s decision to hold an all-inclusive common engineering test appears to have split the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) vertically. Indications are that IIT-Delhi and Bombay could back IIT-Kanpur in holding their own entrance test while Madras, Roorkee, Kharagpur and Guwahati will stand by the Centre’s decision.
If the current wave of resentment among faculty, which gathered momentum on Saturday, a day after IIT-Kanpur’s decision, is backed by their respective senates, it would add to the raft of entrance tests students take after their boards. IIT-Kanpur’s senate called the HRD ministry’s decision on admissions “academically and methodically unsound”. Faculty members in Delhi and Bombay also expressed resentment that the concerns raised by them, including the 2014 roll-out, were not addressed by the HRD ministry.
All India IIT Faculty Federation secretary Prof. A K Mittal said, “The IIT-Kanpur’s decision should not be seen in isolation. We are talking to all IITs and there is resentment among them on the fact that the IITs will not conduct their own exam and that the introduction has been scheduled for 2013 despite our reservations on the preparedness.”
But IIT-Guwahati Director Gautam Barua criticised IIT-Kanpur senate’s decision. “I am sad that they have to take this extreme step for such a small matter. Right now, we are not talking about one common entrance test. We are basically talking about… having a common exam for NITs, IITs and IIITs. Whether this leads to a common exam for everybody, only time will tell,” he said. His IIT-Kharagpur counterpart Damodar Acharya said the institution did not have any objection to the Centre’s move.
Source: The Times of India, June 10, 2012
Higher Education News and Views 
You must be logged in to post a comment.