S.S. Vasan, a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford, has a nice op-ed in today's Hindu, on the Joint Entrance Examination conducted by the IITs, and some ways of 'reforming' it. He makes an important point: there are about 15,000 students selected by JEE's screening test, the first of JEE's two hurdles; but, only about 4,000 or so emerge with a rank after crossing the second hurdle. What happens to the remaining 11,000 students?
Unfortunately, the plight of many thousands of these students year after year does not receive much attention from the Indian media, which is overly interested in reporting the success stories.
These students, who get through the first -- but not the second -- hurdle, are at the mercy of AIEEE, or one or more of the state level CETs. Instead of treating these meritorious students shabbily by making them start afresh in these other exams, why not treat them well?
Vasan examines two possibilities: some sort of convergence over several years (with an eventual merger) of AIEEE and the JEE screening test. The second possibility is to keep them separate, but provide a rank to all who pass the JEE screening test so that it can be utilized for admission into the NITs.
My own preference would be to go for a radical solution, wherein there is one national level exam, whose sole purpose is standardization across the many higher secondary boards that our country has. In such an exam, everyone who writes it would get an all-India rank (or a percentile score) and/or an absolute score. However, I also see that this radical solution is impractical. There is a certain aura and momentum that the JEE has, and it would be hard to make the IITs give up their hold on it, or reform it into a national level exam of the kind I visualize. Vasan makes an essentially similar point -- that JEE will probably stay -- using different arguments.
Since I have to concede that the national level exam (in engineering, we do have one: AIEEE) has to co-exist with JEE, I find both options given by Vasan quite sensible. I am glad to see that we now have one more voice contributing to the pool of ideas on how our country's higher education system is taken forward.
Also in to-day's Hindu, there is a report on a speech by N. Ram, its editor-in-chief. In his speech, he has
suggested a ``reliable and fair'' countrywide common aptitude and proficiency test for admissions to the professional courses and termed it an ``educational and social priority.''
In other words, he seems to be asking for tests of aptitude similar to SAT (for UG admissions) and GRE (for PG admissions), together with 'proficiency' tests (probably in individual subjects). Hopefully, UGC, AICTE, Medical Council and other bodies entrusted with running our higher education system are listening.