IIT-ENTRY LEVEL QUALIFICATION

CHENNAI: Union human resource development minister Kapil Sibal’s suggestion to the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) to consider raising the



entry level qualification for appearing for the Joint Entrance Examination (JEE) from 2011 has come at just about the right time, feel experts .





The HRD minister’s take on the issue is very much on the lines of what experts within the IIT system have been articulating over the past few years. “In fact, this is a positive change on the part of the government. Four years ago, when the IIT standing council had recommended that only students with an aggregate score of 85% and above in Plus Two board examinations should be permitted to appear for the JEE, the government rejected it and fixed 60% marks as the eligibility criteria,” recalled a director of an IIT.





There is already a growing concern among the IITs that they are being deprived of the best students as largely only those “conditioned by coaching centres” come out with stellar performance in the nerve-wracking JEE. There is view that the coaching centres fail to teach the basic concepts to students as their training is usually “numerically heavy.” The knowledge gained by students in the science and mathematics subjects at the higher secondary level is almost completely ignored in the selection process.





Professor M Anandakrishnan, chairman of the board of governors of IIT Kanpur and Rajasthan, felt a higher eligibility criteria of an aggregate score of 80% or above in Plus Two, will drastically change the learning priorities of aspirants. “A major trend now is that children neglect higher secondary school education and prepare only for the JEE. If you raise the Plus Two eligibility norms, they will be forced to concentrate on school education as well,” he argued.





“This will also reduce the number of applications for JEE being unnecessarily processed now. I don’t think the higher eligibility scores will affect rural students as 80% is a reasonable figure to attain,” he added.





This year over 3.95 lakh aspirants took the JEE when just 7,300-odd seats were available across 15 IITs. “Why should the IITs take the burden of conducting an examination for such a vast number of students for so few seats,” asked an IIT director. Issues like the different levels of standards in various boards of education can be sorted through “a marks normalisation process” , said Anandakrishnan



SOURCE;ET