Why Multiple Entrance Exams

Directors of IITs are apparently extremely concerned that students in India have to give a large number of tests for admission to engineering colleges, and want to reduce that to one test. This, it is claimed, will reduce stress in the society.

Has anyone asked a question, why students in India have to give a large number of tests. If someone has, then I have missed it in the various reports. Let me clarify the question. We have AIEEE as the "national" level exam for admission to a large number of centrally funded institutions, several deemed universities, many private universities, etc. States, typically, have either their own state level test, or they depend on AIEEE to give a state-level rank as well. Let us assume that most students have to give a state level test as well.

Now, consider a student who has given these two tests. Why should s/he give a third test. Of course, the naive answer is that there are so many universities (including IITs) who have their own admission tests, and if a student wants admission to any of them, then the student has to give the test for that university. Fair enough. But, when I am in the admission market, what am I looking at. Basically, I want to get admission in a university which is the best I can get into based on my "credentials," and sometimes the best is not a clear choice, and I may have some geographical preference, and sometimes I may just fancy a place. If the best that I think I should try for is not equivalent to any university that AIEEE or state level exam is going to give me admission into, then I have to give the admission test of that university. This explains why a lot of people would want to give IIT JEE. The perception (and in my opinion, the reality too) is that IITs are better than any place where one could get admission through AIEEE, and hence one needs to give IIT JEE.

But when we talk about students give 10+ tests, many of those tests are for universities which are similarly placed in terms of their quality, reputation, etc. Why do students give multiple tests for similar quality  universities. If I have already given AIEEE and a state-level exam, why do I give tests for those universities which are similar in quality compared to those who admit through AIEEE or state level exam. Again, there may be some specific geographic preference, or a fancy for a particular place. But why 10+ exams.

The reason is that all our exams are one-time exams and a small problem, a slight headache can cause serious reduction in performance. So you want to hedge your bets. If you did not perform in one exam, you should not have to waste one year. If we could somehow bring in a system where I could give AIEEE once, get a score, and if the score is poor, give it again, get another score, and if it is still poor, give it the third time, and the best of the three scores will be used for admission. Immediately, the need for multiple admission tests go away. And when these private universities see that they are missing students, they will start admitting AIEEE students.

So, instead of mandating that there be a single exam (which can be and will be challenged in court, after all, wasn't AIEEE supposed to be that single exam), create conditions that students don't have to give multiple exams.

But for doing this, one will have to follow international best practices. Globally, admission is done during the 12th class (or the highest class of the school) and not after. The admission is provisional subject to you passing the school leaving exam. But we want to do all admission processing - from admission test to counseling to final admission within a 3-month window. And this, the Directors and other administrators believe is sacrosanct. Why is this 3-month window sacrosanct?

Now that a magic formula for normalization has been discovered, it should be trivial to conduct a simpler admission test throughout the year which students can give after 11th class, and admission decision be taken based on those scores subject to specified performance in the school leaving exam.

I am reminded of another government program which is now about 50 year old too - the family planning stuff. For a long time, they focused on delayed marriage, telling the virtues of smaller family, making available contraceptives easily and cheaply, and so on. And then in the 80s, several reports pointed out that all this will have miniscule impact. They explained why focus on health, education and gender equality will have a much bigger impact. India changed the focus of its family planning and the fertility rates have come down substantially in this period. (They still are high because the delivery of health and education services have not improve to the desirable levels.)

In the same sense, the government (with the help of IIT Directors) is solving the problem in the wrong way. One shouldn't mandate that all tests be scrapped, but create conditions that multiple tests of same kind don't help anyone.

There is another reason why students give a few specific exams (does not hold true for all admission tests). A few universities have an admission test which is very different from the traditional PCM test, with equal weight to three subjects. For example, the admissions tests for BITS, Pilani and IIIT, Delhi are very different. Now, a student may believe that s/he has higher chance of succeeding there because there is a better match between his/her skills/knowledge and what the exam is testing.

In the new scheme of things, such innovations and different ways of admitting students will be killed

In the proposed model of admission, if a science institute wants to consider biology for admission, IIT Directors won't allow this. After all, IITs admit students to Bio related programs using PCM only, so why can't all science institutes admit their students using PCM only. (And I have heard the argument: In one of the recent meetings, one of the IISER Directors was called. He did not show up, nor did he send any comments about Ramasami Committee report. So because of his "mistake," all science institutes in the country now have to admit students using PCM marks only.)

On the other hand, if a university decides that for admission to a computer applications program, they don't want to test Chemistry, but give more focus on Physics and Maths, they can't do this. The scores of ISEET (Indian Science and Engineering Entrance Test) will be sacrosanct. You can only play around with the weights of three components - 12th class board marks, aptitude score, and PCM score. Within each score, you don't have any flexibility.

Today, in the country, mediocrity has become a much bigger virtue than excellence, since mediocrity is misunderstood as equality, and excellence is misunderstood as discrimination. And instead of leading the society, IIT Directors (as part of IIT Council) have decided to follow the society.

Legal Problems in Changing JEE

There have been a lot of debate in the newspapers as well as on my blog (1, 2, 3) on the Ramasami Committee report, the desirability of considering board performance in engineering admission, and the problems of the boards, etc. One aspect that has not been considered is the legal process that needs to be followed for bringing about any change in the system. Who has the authority to decide that there will be no JEE tomorrow.

Let us start from the Institutes of Technology Act, which forms the legal basis for setting up IITs. Relevant parts of the Act, which deal with admissions are reproduced below (thanks to my colleague Neeraj Misra for pointing this out):

28. Subject to the provisions of this Act and the Statutes. The Ordinances of each Institute may provide for all or any of the following matters, namely:-

 (a) the admission of the students to the Institute;

29.

(1) Save as otherwise provided in this section, Ordinances shall made by the Senate.
(2) All Ordinances made by the Senate shall have effect from such date as it may direct, but every Ordinance so made shall be submitted, as soon as may be, to the Board and shall be considered by the Board at its next succeeding meeting.
(3) The Board shall have power by resolution to modify or cancel any such Ordinance and such Ordinance shall from the date of such resolution stand modified accordingly or cancelled, as the case may be.

33.

(1) It shall be the general duty of the Council to co-ordinate the activities of all the institutes.
(2) Without prejudice to the provisions of sub-section (1), the Council shall perform the following functions, namely:- Functions of Council 

(a) to advise on matters relating to the duration of the courses, the degrees and other academic distinctions to be conferred by the Institutes, admission standards and other academic matters.

Reading the Act, it is amply clear that admission to IITs has to be done as per their respective ordinances, and that ordinances can only be made by their respective Senates (with some power to their respective Boards to modify and cancel any proposed ordinance).

Now, let us look at the Ordinances of IIT Kanpur (and I would assume that other IITs would have taken a similar decision for admission to under-graduate programs). The Ordinance 3.2 says:

3.2 The Admission of Indian Nationals to the B. Tech., B. Tech.-M. Tech. (Dual Degree) and M.Sc. (Integrated) Programmes shall be made once a year on the basis of the Joint Entrance Examination (JEE) conducted jointly by all the IITs.

The Ordinance is very clear how the admission has to take place. As far as spirit of the Act is concerned, any significant change in JEE should be first approved by Senates of all seven IITs, but that spirit was lost long time ago. As far as the letter of the Act is concerned, changes to admission process can be done by those conducting and managing JEE (that is Directors, Chairpersons and Vice Chairs of JEE), but only as long as the exam name remains Joint Entrance Examination, and it is conducted jointly by all the IITs.

In the proposed set up, the examination name is being changed to ISEET (Indian Science-Engineering Entrance Test), and its conduct will be the responsibility of an external body. How would this stand a legal challenge. If any stake holder, any student, any potential student, any parent, were to challenge such a decision (as and when it is announced) in any High Court of the country, getting a stay should be possible. And since ISEET would be discriminating against those who are giving board exams in 2012, it really should not be too difficult to at least get a stay order (though I must admit that I am not a legal expert).

The way IIT Council has operated so far, it is not just assuming the power of Senates of seven IITs, it also seems to believe that it has the power to decide admission policies for all other colleges and universities in the country. It has no problem in deciding that admissions to all engineering colleges should be on the basis of ISEET and board marks. Why is IIT Council discussing admissions in NITs, IISERs, IIITs, and other places. Does it believe that it has the legal mandate and that those systems can't think for themselves. Interestingly, the minutes issued by the Ministry for the September 2011 meeting initially said,

"the Council appreciated efforts and accepted the broad principles indicated in the report. It asked Dr. Ramasami to submit the final report, which was to be placed before CABE and State Education Ministers for a final decision."

 The revised minutes for the meeting say,

"the Council decided that for admission to undergraduate programmes in Science and Engineering weightage be given to the marks obtained by the students in class XIIth board examination after scientific statistical normalization. It was also decided that the report, which has been accepted by the IIT Council would also be placed before the CABE and State Education Ministers so that the new system could be put in place by the academic session 2013-14."

It is extremely interesting that IIT Council accepts a report which is not even submitted at that time. Someone also decided between the initial minutes and the revised minutes that IIT Council indeed had the power to force this way of admissions on everyone, and they don't need to talk to State Education Ministers for a final decision.

People who reach at the top should be humble. Unfortunately the minutes of the IIT Council do not express that humility.

Where I Disagree with JEE Change Proposal?

I had an interesting discussion with a colleague on the proposed changes to the admission process of IITs (and other Centrally Funded Technical Institutes).

He asked me several pointed questions, and that helped me in really thinking through all options and figure out what is a major problem and what is a minor problem in the whole story (in my opinion - your mileage may vary).

The first question was, how I feel about including a test on aptitude in the admission process. I certainly feel positive about it.

The second question was, would it be alright if NITs, other CFTIs, and may be other colleges and universities start using JEE performance for admission. I see a small issue with this. If everybody starts using this performance, the the number of candidates become 10-15 lakhs, and it will have to be outsourced. May be there will be pressures from other stake holders to changes the exam in ways that we don't like. But, then these are minor issues. Any one anyway has a right to use the performance of a public exam in any way they deem fit. So we can't stop it anyway. And IIMs have shown that even though CAT is used by many and it is given by large number of students, they maintain complete control over its content. So, even if IITs have to outsource JEE, they can still retain adequate control.

The third question was, whether it was alright for a professional body like ETS to conduct the exam. Well, the answer is yes, if they are only going to conduct the exam, but if they determine the syllabus, they determine the pattern and style of the exam, they determine the level of difficulty, then there will be concerns. Over the last several years, many changes have been brought in in the conduct of JEE. Many of those changes were not because of the wider discussions at IITs, and were not very positive. In fact, the complaint has been that IITs are not proactive in making changes. But a body independent of IITs will really not be independent. It would be far easier for the MInistry to force changes in the admission process through this so-called independent body. So, we are going from a system of resisting changes to a system where ministry and not academicians will decide the changes. Does not seem like an improvement.

The fourth question was, do I believe that current JEE has negative impact on school education and a way has to be found to encourage school education. Yes, I do. Current JEE has contributed to lowering the quality of education in schools.

Then, am I not agreeing with everything that the new plan is doing or trying to achieve.

Sorry, no. The devil is in the detail. I strongly believe that there are alternate ways of encouraging school education. Considering the normalized board marks (assuming that the committee has found a good-enough formula for normalization) for eligibility would have an equally strong impact on school education, without adding to the stress of the students. By considering school marks in such a cut-throat competition, they are increasing stress, and incentivising unfair practices in the board exams, and it is next to impossible to bring down the unfair practices when there are 25-30 lakh candidates giving 5-10 tests each. What is more, there is nothing one gains by including 12th class marks in the admission process. The goal is to ensure that students preparing for admission to IITs (and other fine institutions) should take school education seriously. This will be achieved by having the 12th class marks as eligibility criteria, without the negative side effects.

Further, the proposal does not talk about the biggest problem of all: stress due to an exam on a single day. The ISEET exam is proposed to be conducted twice a year, but nothing has been said whether a student is allowed to give it both the times and show only the higher performance to the admissions committee. Even if it does, we need to go further and have this exam through out the year.

Third, it does not consider the problems of conducting a large test.securely. The problem that we find with board exams will slowly creep into any large test. One way to control the problem was to have 2-stage selection process. This made sure that even if someone could get through to the second stage by unfair means, the security in the second stage would be so tight that it won't be able to use unfair means at that time. If having the first stage in December was a problem, then the solution was not to cancel it, but to hold it earlier, may be even six additional months in advance (and indeed hold it multiple times, with option to repeat them).

Fourth, I see the process wrong and giving rise to suspicions. In the past, so many people have given so many suggestions from within the IIT system as well as from outside, and what do Directors do - dump those suggestions, citing ministry pressures, or some other "practical" problems. Now suddenly many of them are on an overdrive in supporting a proposal which is opposed by most stake holders. As Abi would say, does not pass the smell test.