After the IITs, it is the turn of FMS to give up its own entrance test and instead switch to CAT. At a faculty meeting on Monday, the DU directive to the prestigious B-school to scrap its entrance test was shared. However, the move is being opposed by faculty, students and the alumni. ?The directive came on August 25 and the first faculty meeting happened then. The second meeting happened on Monday but we can?t conduct the exam. We can?t go in the league with all other colleges,? said a student from the institute.
FMS is not the first institute to take the brunt of the ?common entrance exam? policy of the government. Last week, the IITs and the Indian Institute of Science announced that the JMET would be done away with to give way to CAT. ?The faculty feels FMS is being forced into taking CAT and we are not ready with the admission process. The problem is not funds but the human resource of the university as they are managing the change in pattern from yearly to the semester system,? said another student.
While DU vice chancellor Dinesh Singh was abroad and unavailable to comment, a former dean of the institute said: ?The pressure has always been on FMS to give up the exam and we always resisted it because it not a small institute. Moreover, the institute has its own identity and history,? said a former dean of FMS.
Experts say with FMS accepting CAT, the B-school may get lost in the growing crowd of management colleges. In fact, all the administrative work at FMS is conducted by dean of faculty and the university assists FMS only in conference work. ?There should be a reference exam for management as how many exams can a student take? This is individual institute?s decision and there is no direction from the ministry. This step could have been prompted by the medical and dental test scams in DU,? said a senior ministry official.
Citing the example of the US which has SAT, the official said: ?We are looking at a common entrance exam for the whole country which is suitably designed and gives weightage to class 12 marks. Moreover, if institutes feel they?ll lose their unique characterstics, then they should tailor the exams to the genius of each child.?
Meanwhile, students of FMS plan to go on a silent march to the VC office on Wednesday, and have set up a page on Facebook to garner support.
