Close to 4 lakh students took the IITJEE (Indian Institute of Technology Joint Entrance Exam) on Sunday, April 12 and finally 7,000 to 8,000 students will gain admissions this summer into the 8 IITs currently in the country. This will be an increase in number of seats from last year because of the doubling of reservation from 9% to 18%, which has lead to 9% more seats being added at the IITs. Although a plan to add 8 more IITs by the government of India is in place, the ?IIT dream? though, is getting more difficult for students to attain with each passing year. This year?s applicants were up 25% from last years? 3.2 lakh. Says Ashok Gupta, dean, alumni affairs & international programmes at IIT Delhi, ?The IITJEE exam is the main admission criteria for entrance into the IITs, along with a 60% requisite in class 12 exam results. Our admission process gives no room for subjectivity. By contrast, in the US the SAT is just one of the qualifiers for getting admission into an undergraduate engineering degree and extra curricular activities and vision of students get equal weightage for admissions.?
Just like IITJEE results are the key criteria for entrance into the IITs, so is the case with most other engineering institutes, wherein the results of the entrance test hold maximum weightage for admissions. A discussion on whether there should be a common entrance for all engineering institutes in India has merit, but because of the variations involved and not in the least that article 15(5) of the Constitution of India, which states that private universities cannot be regulated for entrance, will not see the light of day. So while institutes such as the IITs and NITs have government-driven common entrances such as IITJEE and AIEEE respectively, private universities do not have to conform to a similar regimen. Three cases where the issue of admissions was also addressed put this to rest. The 2002 TMA Pai case clearly said that unaided (or private) professional institutes are entitled to autonomy in their admissions but at the same time they should not forgo or discard the principle of merit. The judges also put forth the option that unaided non-minority professional colleges can have a certain percentage of seats reserved by the management for students who had passed common entrance test. The 2003 Islamic Academy of Education and others vs State of Karnataka and others further validated by not going beyond the law laid down by the TMA Pai case.
Recently in 2005 PA Inamdar case, the bench held unanimously that with regards to admissions up to the level of undergraduate education, the minority unaided educational institutions enjoy total freedom.
Another premise supporting multiple entrance exams for engineering is that while in the US education up to class 12 is largely normalised, in India state engineering institutes will develop their exam based on the standard of class 12 exams of the state, which vary for each state unless they follow the Centre-driven CBSE or ICSE board.
Professor R Chattopadhyay, chairman JEE IIT Delhi says, ?For IITJEE students? fundamentals in science and math need to be strong.
Additionally, while setting the paper we take into consideration variations across boards in all states as we have students from across the country taking the exam and also foreign nationals. State universities which take maximum students from the state may wish to design their entrance exams differently?.
Recently, however, it was proved that colleges could come together to administer a common entrance as is the case with the national law colleges. National Law School of India University (NLSIU) in Bangalore was the first undergraduate law college in India started about 20 years ago. Today there are more than 10 undergraduate national law schools across the country that have been established under the state acts and till 2008 had separate entrance exams. In 2006, Varun Bhagat, a class 12 student filed a public interest litigation in the Supreme Court against the Union of India and various national Law Schools, saying he was finding it difficult to prepare for multiple law entrance tests along with board exams. As per the Supreme Court, National Law Schools were advised to formulate a common test and with the assistance of the MHRD and UGC last year, for the first time seven national law schools came together to adminster the CLAT, the common law admission test. This year it is expected that 11 national law institutes will participate in the process. There are yet many law colleges such as Government Law College in Mumbai and Faculty of Law, Delhi University that do not participate in this exam, but says Career Launcher?s director, R Sreenivasan, ?National law colleges have become a brand and soon the CLAT, like the IITJEE will become a brand too in its own right?.
Although a single entrance exam eligible for all engineering institutes is an ?idealistic notion?, there could be a ?balance of convenience? between state entrances and private universities. This would save serious students the stress of sitting for at least 5 to 10 entrances, having to deal with overlapping dates and spending money on multiple applications to feel assured that s/he stands a chance to gain admission. Some say that with multiple exams, students also get multiple chances. Incase one has had a bad day for a particular college entrance, s/he can try again for another. But someone supporting the US system of a single common entrance examination would argue that the SAT score considered average by one college, could be considered strong by another. Additionally, students can also take the SAT over a period of time.
?malvika.chandan@expressindia.com