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LATEST NEWS UPDATES | IITs invoke Nehru in test tiff

IITs invoke Nehru in test tiff

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published Published on Jun 13, 2012   modified Modified on Jun 13, 2012
-The Telegraph

IIT faculty today invoked Jawaharlal Nehru to protect the schools’ autonomy, accusing the Union HRD ministry of “political interference” by proposing a single engineering entrance exam.

The IIT faculty federation issued a statement saying its fight was “to protect the academic excellence and autonomy of the institutions envisioned by Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru from any political interference”.

The statement, issued by faculty federation secretary Atul Mittal, came a day after HRD minister Kapil Sibal was reported to have virtually ruled out a review of the IIT Council’s decision on a single Joint Entrance Examination (JEE).

According to the statement, the faculty had “no personal agenda” behind their fight against the IIT Council’s decision. It was mainly opposed to the provision for giving weightage to Class XII marks in the proposed exam and the move to launch it from next year.

The new JEE will be a two-tier test comprising the JEE-Main and the JEE-Advanced.

“We feel the proposed JEE is an attack on the autonomy of the IITs. But Nehru wanted IITs to be truly autonomous institutions,” Mittal told The Telegraph.

The IITs are the brainchild of Nehru who wanted the schools to focus on research and education to produce skilled manpower to meet the technical and scientific needs of Independent India.

Faculty federation president K. Narasimhan, from IIT Bombay, said the one-nation one-test principle would add to students’ stress.

At present, there are over 100 entrance tests, including the IIT-JEE, the All India Engineering Entrance Exam and state-level JEEs. If a candidate does not perform well in one test, he/she can bank on others to get admission into institutions the same year.

“But if there is just one test and a student does not do well in that test or he fails to appear in that test, he will have to lose one year completely. To ensure that he does not lose one year, the candidate will be under extreme stress to perform in the national test,” Narasimhan said.

He said a percentile-based normalisation procedure to give weightage to board marks was flawed given the heterogeneity of school boards.

The faculty members said IIT senates were supposed to decide admission and exam policies, not the Sibal-headed IIT Council.

Anurag Mehra, an IIT Bombay faculty, said the proposed test would emasculate the role of senates. “If these ‘reforms’ are forced through, it will lead to a greater degree of alienation of faculties from their institutions and emasculate the role of senates,” he said.

Narasimhan said the new JEE was more of a “cosmetic” change that does not touch the real problem. The idea that giving weightage to board marks would discourage students from taking private coaching may not be true, he said.

“In India, children are ignoring school studies and going to coaching centres only to get special inputs to crack entrance tests…. The poor quality of school education is the main reason for the mushrooming of private coaching centres.”

Narasimhan said if the IIT Council did not reconsider its decision, other IITs would join hands with the IIT Kanpur senate that has decided to hold its own entrance exam.


The Telegraph, 13 June, 2012, http://www.telegraphindia.com/1120613/jsp/nation/story_15604502.jsp#.T9gfmxeO25w


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