New IIT exam comes in for all round criticism, alumni may move court over joint eng test

[Tiger80]

New IIT exam comes in for all round criticism, alumni may move court over joint eng test NEW DELHI: The combined entrance test for admission to central engineering institutes including Indian Institutes for Technology (IITs) has come under fire from the institute's alumni and students, with the IIT Faculty Federation shooting off a letter to PM Manmohan Singh strongly opposing the move. IIT Delhi alumni president Somnath Bharti said they were considering legal recourse. "We are looking at legal options," he said, adding that the new format would increase dependence on coaching institutes and would be subject to the varying standards of Class XII boards, bringing down the standard of the premier institute. Sources in IIT said several directors were unhappy with the decision to bring these changes but were left with little option but to comply. All India IIT Faculty Federation secretary A K Mittal said, "We feel cheated. Despite promising us that no steps will be taken if there is any dissent, the HRD minister has gone ahead." Mittal said they had written to the PM highlighting the practical problems of introducing a new format in 2013. Five out of the seven IIT senates had opposed the move and are opposed to academic control being taken away from IIT. Author Chetan Bhagat, an ex-IITian, tweeted, "It makes me extremely sad to see an institution that gave me so much being destroyed by politicians." Describing the decision to have a new exam as "disastrous", Bhagat said, "The new IIT selection rules part of government's 'Can't make new A-grade institutions. Let's destroy what we have policy." In a sharp criticism about weightage being given to Class XII board exam, Bhagat said, "In my Class XII practicals, people who knew the teacher got full marks. Now that will count in the IIT entrance." He was joined by Super 30's Anand Kumar who said the decision would tilt against rural students. "Students who come from rural backgrounds manage to pass by studying on their own. They will not be able to compete with others," he said. "If there can be one test for more competitive AIIMS examination, which has fewer seats and more candidates, and IIMs, why can't there be such a similar test for the IITs", Kumar said, adding that the pressure of three tests, especially the JEE advanced that is expected to be tougher, will increase mental stress on children. Anand also opposed the move to introduce the new system by next year. His Super 30, set up a decade ago, has been lauded by Time magazine as the best in Asia. The institute provides free residential coaching to 30 meritorious students from the underprivileged sections of society and so far 263 students have made it to the IITs. Maintaining that there was uncertainty still about the mechanism of the proposed two-tier test, a worried parent Sanjiv Malhotra said if JEE-mains and JEE-advanced were held the same day, it would be psychologically draining for the students. "If the student is not able to give the test on the assigned day, he stands to lose one precious year," he said. http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/home/education/entrance-exams/New-IIT-exam-comes-in-for-all-round-criticism-alumni-may-move-court-over-joint-eng-test/articleshow/13651157.cms

[The Outsider]

The entire premise of the argument from both sides is misguided. Instead of giving so much time, focus, and energy to the entrance criteria much more should be done to improve the quality of education in the IITs and other universities. If the institutes are providing top quality education, the exact entrance criteria(the kind of nitpicking that is going on) should be irrelevant to the quality of graduating students. Top American universities have a much more subjective criteria of selection, but because the quality of education is so high they produce much better graduates than IITs on average.

[Tiger80]

The entire premise of the argument from both sides is misguided. Instead of giving so much time, focus, and energy to the entrance criteria much more should be done to improve the quality of education in the IITs and other universities. If the institutes are providing top quality education, the exact entrance criteria(the kind of nitpicking that is going on) should be irrelevant to the quality of graduating students. Top American universities have a much more subjective criteria of selection, but because the quality of education is so high they produce much better graduates than IITs on average.

I think all people agree on Improving quality of education ,but to improve quality you need funds.Already govt subsidizes education at IIT and with rising inflation it will become impossible for education institutes to provide quality education with same fee

[The Outsider]

I think all people agree on Improving quality of education ' date='but to improve quality you need funds.[b']Already govt subsidizes education at IIT and with rising inflation it will become impossible for education institutes to provide quality education with same fee

There shouldn't be any subsidized education for those who can afford it. If the government wants they can implement several things like giving financial aid to students who cannot afford it and charge full fees from those who can. This might not be very easy to implement in India, so they can make it mandatory for anyone graduating from an institute making use of subsidies to work in the public sector for X number of years or pay the full amount. Anyways, Indians are terrible in giving back voluntarily. Despite the success of so many IIT graduates over so many years, the alumni contributions from them would be a pittance even when compared to a mid level American university, forget about places like Harvard and Princeton. The focus of discussion by the government and IIT alumni should be on such issues rather than the exact entrance criteria.

[punjabi_khota]

The entire premise of the argument from both sides is misguided. Instead of giving so much time, focus, and energy to the entrance criteria much more should be done to improve the quality of education in the IITs and other universities.

Agree.

If the institutes are providing top quality education, the exact entrance criteria(the kind of nitpicking that is going on) should be irrelevant to the quality of graduating students. Top American universities have a much more subjective criteria of selection, but because the quality of education is so high they produce much better graduates than IITs on average.

Well, the problem in India is that whenever you have subjective criteria, the corruption etc. roars its ugly head. Anytime you trust people (e.g. teachers at high school who give out marks for practicals), they will find ways to make money and **** the system up. Thats the reason no one ever cares about using recommendation letters for admissions in India, because every ram shyam ghanshyam will get stellar letters from their high school teachers. 'Better graduates than IITs on average' is debatable, but I guess it depends on individual experiences.

[Sehwag1830]

More than student and Govt. what are Indian companies doing ? Companies like Maruti Suzuki and Hero Honda send 2500 crores annually to Japan as royalty payment for technology. Why don't they collaborate with IITs on technology front instead of winning contracts through bribing govt.

[The Outsider]

Well, the problem in India is that whenever you have subjective criteria, the corruption etc. roars its ugly head. Anytime you trust people (e.g. teachers at high school who give out marks for practicals), they will find ways to make money and **** the system up. Thats the reason no one ever cares about using recommendation letters for admissions in India, because every ram shyam ghanshyam will get stellar letters from their high school teachers.

Yeah, I agree. I am also not in favor of introducing too much of subjectivity into admissions in India for the reasons you mentioned. However, take Chetan Bhagat's example of someone knowing the teacher and getting full marks in a practical exam. Around 20% gets counted towards the total and it's one out of 4 or 5 subjects people take in class XII. A top student will anyway do well in the practical and an average student who got full marks by unfair means in the practical will get exposed in the remaining exams. The written exams are pretty safe from all this, and I don't see much wrong in giving them some weight in making the final decision. On the other hand, I am also fine having an entrance criteria ignoring class XII marks as well. I just don't think that it is an issue worth the amount of debate given there are more fundamental things broken in the system.

'Better graduates than IITs on average' is debatable, but I guess it depends on individual experiences.

Yeah, people will have different perspectives on it depending on their experience.

[The Outsider]

More than student and Govt. what are Indian companies doing ? Companies like Maruti Suzuki and Hero Honda send 2500 crores annually to Japan as royalty payment for technology. Why don't they collaborate with IITs on technology front instead of winning contracts through bribing govt.

You've got to understand that while the IITs are one of the best educational institutes in the world, they are nowhere near the top as far as research is concerned. It will take years of concentrated effort and investment in terms of getting and establishing top researchers and facilities there.

[Tiger80]

Yeah, I agree. I am also not in favor of introducing too The written exams are pretty safe from all this, and I don't see much wrong in giving them some weight in making the final decision. On the other hand, I am also fine having an entrance criteria ignoring class XII marks as well. I just don't think that it is an issue worth the amount of debate given there are more fundamental things broken in the system. Yeah, people will have different perspectives on it depending on their experience.

Nothing wrong with theory that Class 12 marks should be given weightage ,but problem is all Indian states have different boards along with 3 central boards.All of them have different marking patterns.Already some IITains are commenting in TOI section that UP,Bihar boards don't give marks above 75-80% while CBSe is very lenient in marking.So it means that dreams of IIT of children which are studying in their state boards which don't give lenient marks is finished

[The Outsider]

Nothing wrong with theory that Class 12 marks should be given weightage ' date='but problem is all Indian states have different boards along with 3 central boards.All of them have different marking patterns.Already some IITains are commenting in TOI section that UP,Bihar boards don't give marks above 75-80% while CBSe is very lenient in marking.So it means that dreams of IIT of children which are studying in their state boards which don't give lenient marks is finished[/quote'] Is this an unresolved issue? What kind of people do we have making policies! Just take the board topper's marks and consider it to be 100% and scale everyone's marks accordingly. Or use a percentile criteria instead of percentages. How difficult is it to resolve such trivial things!

[Raghav_12]

Anybody who cares to understand the problems with proposed IIT entrance system can go through this video. Speaker in this video is Sanjeev Sanghi, IITK alum and teaches Applied Mechanics at IIT Delhi. OK5zdEFpDYQ

[Crookbond]

You've got to understand that while the IITs are one of the best educational institutes in the world' date= they are nowhere near the top as far as research is concerned. It will take years of concentrated effort and investment in terms of getting and establishing top researchers and facilities there.

Just don't get me started on how screwed up research is here's a story to share. A professor received a DST Fast Research grant [1]. Just to setup the context, it's given to young scientists under 35 yeas of age for 3 years. It's upto 23 lakhs for equipment, travel and is supposed to be awarded in 6 months. Now, this professor hasn't received this grant for - hold your breadth- 20 months since it had been awarded to him. More than half of the duration has elapsed for this grant. The professor has published 5 papers in reputed CS conferences in the area the grant was awarded. He has to call, mail and run from pillar to post to get this fund. I feel really sorry for him. However, all is not grim and there are some institutes like IIIT-Hyderabad (for CS) which are doing very well for the support. Some new institutes like IIIT-Delhi are also setting the research led tone. [1] http://www.dst.gov.in/scientific-programme/ser-hr-development.htm

[akshayxyz]

Agree. Well, the problem in India is that whenever you have subjective criteria, the corruption etc. roars its ugly head. Anytime you trust people (e.g. teachers at high school who give out marks for practicals), they will find ways to make money and **** the system up. Thats the reason no one ever cares about using recommendation letters for admissions in India, because every ram shyam ghanshyam will get stellar letters from their high school teachers. 'Better graduates than IITs on average' is debatable, but I guess it depends on individual experiences.

haha, agreed.. if we had some such system, we would have had 95% of folks with "among top5% scholars ever" certificates, ruled by remaining 5%. [real time rambling] India's problems are so numerous and large scale, and so inter-connected - that sometimes it looks like it is going to be in this chaotic state for ever and most products of the sagar manthan (churning) will continue relocating to more conducive environments. But, its not all that hopeless. Just that we cant expect drastic improvements overnight (few years) and should stop getting frustrated over it. Just focus on doing our bit on making incremental improvements in our areas. In longer term, it will all compound and we should be fine. So, key is in finding & executing immediately solvable small targets (2-3 year plans, or even a yearly task/improvement), parallely in all directions/departments. Thinking/dreaming about unrealistic revolutionary changes in systems as a whole, wont lead anywhere and will only add to the frustration. [On Entrance Criteria] Having a common standardized test is one of those problems, that can be and needs to be solved in immediate future. Too much resources are being wasted on multiple exams. So, I am in favor of having just one standardized Engineering/Medical examination, and introducing some subjective parameters. Because of questionable quality of metrics from some sources - over all entrance criteria should be left to the admitting institution, how much weight age they want to give for other metrics than the standardized entrance test. It should not like enforced Function of The-Test and XII marks. Institutions can always allow for weight-age for NTSE, Olympiads, and other talent search exams/competitions/honors. They wont strike the perfect formula in first go, but it does not mean they have to keep waiting for that day. Key is, multiple entrance tests have to go.......... even if that means taking a bit of 'hit' in quality - which is debatable. Instead of arguing over - "we want our own exclusive test", IIT profs should sit down, use their brain and resources, how can they make it reasonably workable using single test mechanism. IITs can also take initiatives in organizing independent talent hunt competitions, awareness campaigns at the primary/lower-high school levels...and them and others can use it as one of the metrics. [more immediate targets in improving education] Another immediate problem (~5-10 years) that needs to be cracked is - ensuring the aid/assistance/reservation is disbursed only to the students who actually need/deserve it... lots of the resources/money is being mismanaged there, and once accounted for, it can be invested in other parts - like improving quality education Quality of education is also tied with Quality of research and talent retention (quality educators)... it wont happen unless there is emphasis/funding on research from top level (govt)...even if you throw money at 'researchers', many might still not choose it - because of quality of life...(and that is when you assume fund money is not sucked dry along the distribution chain) So, infrastructure is another big(gest) thing that needs to be tackled, and where most of the corruption is happening....too many things tied with each other.

[akshayxyz]

Anybody who cares to understand the problems with proposed IIT entrance system can go through this video. Speaker in this video is Sanjeev Sanghi, IITK alum and teaches Applied Mechanics at IIT Delhi. OK5zdEFpDYQ

:nice: covers all the angles. One thing I was surprised at was - he gave an example where in a particular board, a topper with 99% will get 99.99 percentile, and second topper with 94% will get 99.98 %ile.... hinting that, these random gaps are difficult to tackle in calculating proper %ile.. IMO, that should have been solved. As for, standardization across different boards.... they should do this, make top 5-10% of each board sit through (invitation basis) - a subjective test (for prize or whatever), and then use it as a metric to normalize %iles across the board marks :). In fact, may be they can use NTSE (or some such common aptitude test) data to do normalization across the boards. Another strong point was - there has to be a weight-age for Subjective type tests which test the problem solving/analytic ability of the students... If not 2-tier JEE, IITs should be allowed to conduct their own subjective tests, and allow for some weightage in overall entrance criteria. As for common aptitude test - it has to be pushed towards GRE/GMAT kind of scheduling....students should be able to take standardized tests all through the year, at their convenience....AIEEE/IITs should sit together and make it workable as soon as possible.

[akshayxyz]

And whoever suggested, holding multiple exams on the same day will reduce the stress - does not understand stress. I am with Prof Sanghi....XII and common test should be used as first level filter, and subjective test as second filter...and perhaps allowing olympiad kind of tests as - special quota or extra weightage, or alternative to subjective tests. Also, best is, if this common test can be taken throughout the year - like GRE/GMAT.

[Crookbond]

For people interested in this topic, Prof. Dheeraj Sanghi (currently a professor at IITK) blogs regularly on IIT and India education. There are some very interesting blog posts lined up by him. Take a look. http://dsanghi.blogspot.in/

[Crookbond]

And whoever suggested, holding multiple exams on the same day will reduce the stress - does not understand stress. I am with Prof Sanghi....XII and common test should be used as first level filter, and subjective test as second filter...and perhaps allowing olympiad kind of tests as - special quota or extra weightage, or alternative to subjective tests. Also, best is, if this common test can be taken throughout the year - like GRE/GMAT.

It has to come to that now or later. I don't see how we can escape it.

[The Outsider]

Just don't get me started on how screwed up research is here's a story to share. A professor received a DST Fast Research grant [1]. Just to setup the context, it's given to young scientists under 35 yeas of age for 3 years. It's upto 23 lakhs for equipment, travel and is supposed to be awarded in 6 months. Now, this professor hasn't received this grant for - hold your breadth- 20 months since it had been awarded to him. More than half of the duration has elapsed for this grant. The professor has published 5 papers in reputed CS conferences in the area the grant was awarded. He has to call, mail and run from pillar to post to get this fund. I feel really sorry for him. However, all is not grim and there are some institutes like IIIT-Hyderabad (for CS) which are doing very well for the support. Some new institutes like IIIT-Delhi are also setting the research led tone. [1] http://www.dst.gov.in/scientific-programme/ser-hr-development.htm

Yeah, the babudom involved is unbelievable at times and my statement was not just a knock on the quality of researchers at top Indian universities and institutes but on the entire system. However, it's not solely due to babudom. There are major flaws in the manner in which research is done in India. One incident I recall is meeting a PhD student(from a top research institute in India) at a conference and asking him about the basis of certain assumptions he had made in a paper on which he was the first author. He said he wasn't sure and his adviser had asked him to do so. Being a first author on a paper usually implies that one is aware of each and every gory detail which went into it and at the minimum being aware of the entire framework of the problem. I was aghast when I heard his response. It's going to take years of concentrated effort for Indian institutes to produce international class research and the change has to come through so many facets that I find it difficult to believe I can see it in my lifetime.

[Crookbond]

Yeah, the babudom involved is unbelievable at times and my statement was not just a knock on the quality of researchers at top Indian universities and institutes but on the entire system. However, it's not solely due to babudom. There are major flaws in the manner in which research is done in India. One incident I recall is meeting a PhD student(from a top research institute in India) at a conference and asking him about the basis of certain assumptions he had made in a paper on which he was the first author. He said he wasn't sure and his adviser had asked him to do so. Being a first author on a paper usually implies that one is aware of each and every gory detail which went into it and at the minimum being aware of the entire framework of the problem. I was aghast when I heard his response. It's going to take years of concentrated effort for Indian institutes to produce international class research and the change has to come through so many facets that I find it difficult to believe I can see it in my lifetime.

It's the existent of the Guru-Shishya philosophy which obviously doesn't work in a PhD as you need to question & reason beyond your plate. As for the highlighted, I think you would want to add the word - "consistent international class research". At least as far as Computer Science is concerned, few hand picked institutes (IIT-B, IIIT-H and IIIT-D) are on track (or already) producing HQ 1080p researchers. A scout through some best research labs in the industry like IBM Research India, Microsoft Research India and Yahoo! Research affirms my beliefs. But yes, in comparison to countries like US we are far behind and for some very good reasons.

[The Outsider]

It's the existent of the Guru-Shishya philosophy which obviously doesn't work in a PhD as you need to question & reason beyond your plate. As for the highlighted, I think you would want to add the word - "consistent international class research". At least as far as Computer Science is concerned, few hand picked institutes (IIT-B, IIIT-H and IIIT-D) are on track (or already) producing HQ 1080p researchers. A scout through some best research labs in the industry like IBM Research India, Microsoft Research India and Yahoo! Research affirms my beliefs. But yes, in comparison to countries like US we are far behind and for some very good reasons.

I am not belittling the individuals who produce world class research despite the odds - there are quite a few who do and their efforts are commendable, but the overall scenario is grim and that is what my post was referring to. Personally, I also took the easy way out by not returning to India at a research university or institute and there are so many more like me. When I was exploring the option the starting salary for an Assistant Professor was Rs. 20,000 - that's frankly a joke given the fact that you make three times that amount as a graduate student in the US. Even after discounting for the difference in purchasing power it remains a joke. It has improved now after the last pay commission but is still barely enough to have a decent lifestyle. Marry that with the incessant babudom - one of my friend who did go back had to wait one month to be assigned his own office - and you have a disastrous cocktail.