TNN,
Pune Edition, 31st July 2008
Chennai:
Voicing their strong dissaproval of ‘coaching’
to crack the Joint Entrance Exam (JEE), IIT top bosses said
that the system failed to sift the ‘intelligent’
from the trained and mooted a new system for admissions.
Professor V.G. Idichandy, dean (students), IIT Madras, was
vocal in demanding that the JEE be abolished. “One
of the reasons for the poor intake of girls in the flagship
B.Tech programme is that parents don’t send daughters
for coaching classes. The best way to increase the intake
of girls is to have direct admissions,” he said.
Idichandy and IIT-Madras director, M.S. Ananth expressed
concern that the present system did not allow for the 12
years of schooling to have a bearing on admissions into
IITs. “The overall capability of a student cannot
be merely assessed by their performance in physics, mathematics
and chemistry. The student must have good communication
skills also,” Idichandy said.
Ananth said, by attending the IIT coaching classes, students
were learning a wrong lesson that the ends justify the means.
“They (students) think there is nothing wrong in missing
school to attend coaching. But the student does not realize
his real loss.”
Ananth recalled that three years ago, a JEE review committee
had suggested a cutoff of 85% marks in the Class XII board
exam for students to be eligible for the JEE. “But
the CBSE and other boards turned it down and wanted to have
60% as the cut-off. Now, that’s an easy score to get,”
he said.
“You may not be able to do away with the JEE, but
I am wondering if we should be conducting an examination
for 3,00,00 aspirants and selecting just 5,000. Instead,
we must evolve a system where only the top 1% of students
from different state boards and CBSE are permitted to appear
for the JEE,” Ananth said.
While acknowledging that the JEE has led to proliferation
of coaching classes and has put students under stress, IIT-Bombay
director, Ashok Misra, was more cautious on bringing in
wholesale changes. “If we can develop another system
that is not overhyped, I am for it. But doing away with
the JEE does not seem appropriate at present. We have been
constantly working on tweaking the JEE as per the students’
needs and also to cut down on pressure,” he said.
We haven’t heard the last word on this issue.
