Disclosure:
My JEE rank would have gone down a bit if Class 12th marks had been
taken into account.
It has been a
long time since I have written on this space but the foolhardy
committed by IIT council is just too much for me. The 'wise' men have
decided that Class 12th marks in combination with entrance exam would
prove to be a better indicator of quality of students these premier
institutes would be getting.
First of all
I would like to bring to your notice the farce that is our 12th exam.
An example for those of you familiar with Physics: This is
a question I found on the interent. It is from Class 12th
paper of Physics in 2009 and worth 5 marks out of 100.
"Draw
a schematic sketch of a cyclotron. Explain briefly how it works and
how it is used to accelerate te charged particles.
(i) show that
time period of ions in a cyclotron. Explain briefly how it works and
how it is used to accelerate the speed and radius of circular path.
(ii) What is
response condition ? How is it used to accelerate the charged
particles?"
There are
other questions too, very similar to this. This is a perfect example
of a question where one-trick-ponies would lick 5 marks clean. Their
trick being rote learning. And this is supposed to enhance the
quality of IITs.
Now one
argument is that the emphasis on class 12th marks would lead to
demise of coaching institutes. But at what cost? If you look at the
results of CBSE toppers for past few years, you would notice the
place occupied by DPS chain of schools. They seem to have a
stranglehold over results. These behemoths would have the same kind
of monopoly as the coaching institutes have presently. Only thing
different would be the dilution of quality. So I only know Force=
mass * acceleration. This is a question where my eyes filter out 60N
6kg and I promptly answer 10 ms-2 to bag 1-2 marks.
Wow! Life moves to the tune of my trick. I love being a
one-trick-pony.
But the
problem does not stop here. These behemoths don't have branches in
small towns (by small I mean towns with low income) so the populace
there has no chance of getting admission there. In case of coaching
institutes, at least they could go after 12th and then study there for one year and try and get admission in some good college if not
IITs. Now it would be necessary to spend at least 2 years in the
school where most of the money would be taken for ridiculous functions and useless cultural events (of course with fancy dresses) which would be of no help to someone interested in a career in science and technology and low on
lucre. This also means leaving the hometown after 10th (and
yes being lucky enough to get admission).
Now the
sanctity of our boards. Well they seem to be as good as the BCCI in
this regard. Unqualified teachers grading answer sheets. Mass
copying. Impersonation in exam halls. Rigged lab exams. All sorts of
nuisance which is unthinkable in JEE. Open some newspaper of Uttar
Pradesh in March-April and you would laugh/sigh at the state of
affairs of our largest board. Good grief.
Only Mr.
Ignoramus in IIT council would not be knowing about the tie-up of
much loathed coaching institutes with the schools. What difference
will it make to them apart from increasing the pressure on students in
school who could have avoided the pain of preparing for these exams
by not joining a coaching institute.
Finally, do
we need this change? If we assume that these premier institutes
have right way of grading the students then it is very clear the exam
in its current format suffices. I don't have exact data but I believe
that the average CGPA of first 100 JEE rankers is greater than second
100 rankers and so on. So either the grading system is flawed (Jairam
Ramesh was right after all?) or the exam is alright. I hope the
latter is true.
It seems the
Council can't see the woods for the trees. This country spends
billions of dollars on purchasing weapons/technology from abroad but even the research scholars in the premier institutes are paid peanuts. These men and women as human resource could have changed the face and output of
sloths like HAL and DRDO. But may be that's life. As our talent
serves developed world, we remain rooted to our fancy notions and
keep taxing our people (yes the most poor ones too) needlessly.
