Engineering Admissions 2020: IITs should use JEE Mains

In a normal year, this would have been the time when the 12th class board exams would have been over, JEE Mains would be over, and some students would be preparing for JEE Advanced for admission to IITs, which would have been held around 20th May. But this is anything but a normal year. The country had to be locked down. The exams had to be postponed, and we haven't even finished conducting 12th class exams, not to mention admission tests.

In the most optimistic scenario, JEE Mains is proposed to be conducted in the first week of June. To the author, this does not seem feasible. One can conduct a national level exam only when there are not many hot spots, and some limited travel to nearby cities is allowed. JEE Mains is taken by almost 10 lakh students, and you will find everyone being accompanied by 1-2 parents/elders. So we are talking about movement of 30 lakh people (including exam center persons, invigilators, etc.). I doubt if we would be in a position to allow that kind of movement anytime soon.

So, the next semester is unlikely to start in the last week of July. There will be delays. The question is how soon after the situation has improved can we start our colleges. Conducting JEE Advanced in the same format as every year will add five weeks extra to the delay. Since there is a joint counseling of a large number of engineering institutions, the admission to other institutes cannot happen before IITs are ready to do theirs. Even if we were to abandon the joint admission strategy, there is really no point in other institutions doing their admission early, since IITs are the most sought after engineering institutions in the country, and students will leave other institutions when they get admission to IITs, wasting a large number of seats in the next tier institutions.

There are two issues to be considered: Are the advantage of JEE Advanced to IITs so significant that they would go to the extent of imposing a 5-week delay on all other engineering colleges. And the second issue is whether this would be fair to students, and what all we need to do to ensure the maximal fairness in a bad situation.

First, let us take the issue of fairness to students. I am sure some of them (particularly those who would not do well in JEE Mains) would claim that they would have done better in JEE Advanced. They may even challenge the change of admission process in a court on the grounds that they have been working with a specific plan for two years or more, and it is unfair to change goalpost at a late stage. And indeed, some of that feeling would be genuine. Also, some people who took JEE Mains in January and got a good enough score to succeed for JEE Advanced may not have registered for JEE Mains in April. They may now want to take JEE Mains.

So we need to do multiple things. First, all students who had taken JEE Mains in January but did not register for April version should be now allowed to register for the same. To ensure that each one of them would have reasonable time to focus their preparation to the JEE Mains now, we should immediately announce that it won't be conducted in at least 6 weeks (or whatever duration) from the date of announcing change in admission policy. And finally, to mitigate the feeling that JEE advanced is a better predictor of talent, IITs should agree to have a much more liberal branch change policy for this batch. This would mean that even if you think you were good enough for a better rank in JEE Advanced, prove that by getting a better CGPA in the first year in the IIT of your choice.

From the perspective of IITs, there are two advantages of continuing with JEE Advanced. One is the fear of court cases. And second is a feeling of autonomy. One could also add a feeling of JEE advanced being a better exam in detecting talent, but I will dismiss that since IITs have never even cared to think what kind of students they would want to admit, they have never made their data public, or done research themselves in terms of any correlation between the performance in JEE and performance in IITs.

Considering how Supreme Court has been largely supportive of anything reasonably done by the Government, I think the courts would definitely consider Covid-19 as a very special circumstances in which some tough decisions needed to be taken in the interest of saving 5 weeks of several lakh students across the country. As far as the feeling of autonomy is concerned, I think that JEE Advanced is an important symbol of IIT autonomy, and it must be preserved. The fear would be that if this year IITs agree to admission through JEE Mains, they will be pressurized to accept students from JEE Mains every year. So, the government would have to give a very categorical assurance that they will not put pressure on IITs to disband JEE Advanced next year.

With this, it should be possible to admit students in IITs through JEE Mains this year.

While we are at it, let me also suggest how JEE Mains could be conducted as early as possible. As we discussed in the beginning, conducting JEE Mains means allowing 30 lakh people to travel over a period of one week. Now, if a lot of these people would have to travel a couple of hundred KMs, then one can conduct such an exam only after there is normalcy in pretty much all parts of the country. Managing permissions for lakhs of people to do inter-city travel if there are still restrictions would be a nightmare and not worth hurrying up the conduct of the exam. But if NTA can increase the number of test centers so that there is a center in most districts. This would mean that most candidates would have to do only an intra-district travel on the day of the exam. Such an exam can be conducted once we have virus spread under control in large parts of the country.

We need to take a quick decision, since it impacts conduct of JEE Mains also. If we don't decide within the next few days, then we would have by default decided to delay admissions in all engineering colleges by an additional 5 weeks.

Note: The main issue that I want to address is delay of 5 additional weeks. I would be happy if IITs can think of other ways to address this delay.

Be Ready for an Online Semester in August

The lockdown has been extended by another 19 days, as expected. Whenever we do start relaxing the restrictions, it will have to be gradual. My own guess is that the two sectors that will be opened at the very end would be education and entertainment. Will we be ready to start classes in July/August. Seems very unlikely, at least not residential campuses with students from all over the country. The assumption here is that even when we flatten the curve, we will need to maintain vigil in the form of social distancing for a long time. And maintaining social distance in crowded lecture halls, hostels, dining halls, and all other facilities will be a challenge. Also, there are likely to be significant restrictions on organizing large events, student festivals, contests, etc.

Assuming that social distancing requirements will not go away in a couple of months, or even 4-5 months, we really need to think of how to manage the next semester in our educational institutions. We really have three options in India. One is to postpone the next semester by two months, assuming that social distancing norms will get relaxed in an additional two months. But notice, one is taking a risk. What if, they don't. Will we postpone the semester by another month, or two months. Second option is to stagger the semester. Bring in old students in July end, as usual. And bring in new students two months later, when social distancing norms are likely to be more relaxed. The assumption here is that if we have only 75% students (considering a typical engineering under-graduate institution, for others, the number would be different), we could possibly maintain harsher social distancing norms, and only when the norms ease out, do we admit the new students. This has two assumptions, namely, one can maintain social distancing norms with 75% students, and that social distancing norms will sufficiently relax within an additional two months. Again, a significant risk.

So, we should look at the third option. Go online.

In the current semester, a large number of educational institutions have been forced to move instruction online. Faculty had to be trained quickly. Internet access had to be strengthened, investments had to be made in tools for managing online education. Now that all this has happened across the country, we should use the intervening period to look at the difficulties faced in moving online and try to fix them so that we can provide a better learning experience to our students. Many of the problems faced due to lockdown will not be there next semester. If a student does not have Internet access at home, next semester, the student can be asked to go to a nearby place, a friend's home, for example, to gain that access. We can even have local colleges allowing other students to sit there at non-peak hours and use their Internet bandwidth. So all the learning of this semester and all the investments of this semester will be leveraged for one more semester. We can start the semester on time.

And we can have a combination - some batches online and some batches on campus - only so many on campus that we can ensure compliance with social distancing norms. This is really what was also expected when MOOCs started becoming popular that one day, the university experience will not be a continuous four years on campus, but learn online for some semesters, perhaps even part-time, and learn on campus for some other semester to enjoy that wonderful experience.

In the long run, it is clear that Covid-19 would change the education sector completely. Online learning would become a very important part of any educational program. Next semester, we may choose online education for some batches because circumstances are forcing us to. But, in general, we should start getting ready to have an online strategy.

The first Aeronautical Engineering program in India: PEC

The year was 1962. The first Commander-in-chief of the maintenance wing of the Indian Air Force was legendary Air Vice Marshal Harjinder Singh. Here was an officer who was one of the greatest aviation experts. So much so, he had designed and built an aircraft. You can still find the plane “Kanpur 1” in the labs of Punjab Engineering College. He was among the first few employees of the Air Force when it was established in 1932. He had joined as technician and rose to the level of commissioned officer in 1942. He was appointed Air Officer commanding Maintenance Command in 1955, when the command was established. When the level of Command was raised in 1959, he was also promoted to AVM to head the command. He retired in 1963. The Air Force maintenance command was based in Kanpur. He even created a team of Air Force officers who actually manufactured AVROs in Kanpur. “Harjinder Nagar” in Kanpur is named after him. You may read more about the great man here:

https://www.thebetterindia.com/70596/first-officers-indian-air-force-harjinder-singh-jumbo-majumdar/

But we digress. In year 1962, it appeared that we could have some action on our Northern/Eastern front and he felt that Air Force was not prepared for the action. One of the biggest bottleneck that he as the Commander-in-Chief of Maintenance Command felt was lack of engineers to maintain aircrafts. There was no undergraduate program in Aeronautical Engineering in the country. There were a couple of Diploma courses in Aircraft maintenance and IISc Bangalore offered a research program. There was an urgent need by Air Force for the Aeronautical engineers.

He thought of connecting with IIT Kanpur. But they were still under construction, and a new program would produce engineers five years hence. Air Force could not have waited that long. So he thought of his alma mater. He had done his engineering from Maclagan Engineering College in Lahore which had split into two during partition, and the Indian half had established itself as Punjab Engineering College in Chandigarh. He convinced the college that it was so urgent to produce aircraft engineers that he could not wait for a new program to start. The program had to start by shifting students from other disciplines who were about to complete their second year into this new program of Aeronautical Engineering. Since the first two years had a common curriculum, it was indeed a possibility.

The college was ready to do anything for the nation. But it needed labs and faculty. AVM Singh talked to the then Chief Minister of Punjab, Shri Pratap Singh Kairon, who offered all support. He then suggested that Air Force could provide all the equipment necessary for setting up of labs. Faculty was still an issue. There was no way, PEC would be able to recruit several faculty members in a couple of months. The Principal turned to Dr. V S Malhotra, a Professor of Mechanical Engineering, and he agreed to run the new program.

Option was given to all students to change in the beginning of their 3^rd year to Aeronautical Engineering. To make the deal sweeter, AVM Singh announced that all these students will be eligible for recruitment as Pilot Officer right in the 3^rd year, and those selected will get a full salary during their 3^rd and 4^th year. All seventeen went through the Services Selection Board, and 8 were selected as Pilot Officer in Indian Air Force. The other 9 were a disappointed lot. They will not get any money for these two years. But at the end of their program, all 9 were recruited by the fledgling DGCA, and as one of them recently told me, the disappointment of not getting selected as Pilot Officer disappeared when they found out that as DGCA officers all of them will have job till 58 years of age, while in Air Force, the retirement age would depend on your promotions.

Dr. Malhotra had the hard task of training these 17 students with no faculty. He started writing to all institutions in India about various courses. While no institution other than IISc had a department of Aeronautical Engineering, he could find specific faculty members to teach specific courses. So students were sent to IISc Bangalore, IIT Madras and IIT Kanpur for doing certain courses. It certainly helped that a young professor, who too was an alumnus of Maclagan Engineering College, had assumed the role of Director of IISc Bangalore. He was Head of Aeronautical Engineering Department before that. That young professor was none other than Satish Dhawan who would later become Chairman of ISRO.

The students would go to these institutions (and notice that IITM and IITK were just 2-3 years old and had a lot of teething troubles of their own, but they too chipped in because of nation first) for a few weeks each, and go through a compressed course by a faculty member. In the meanwhile, Air Force helped with setting up of labs so that students could come back and do their experiments on campus or at Air Force station. (So our students doing courses at other educational institutions and getting credit at PEC is nothing new for us. It is part of our DNA.)

At the end, the first set of 17 graduate engineers in Aeronautical Engineering in the whole country came out of PEC in 1964, with 100 percent placement – 8 in Indian Air Force, and 9 in DGCA. One of them, Shri H S Khola would later become Director General of Civil Aviation in India.

We at PEC are proud of our heritage and how our alums have built India, one small step at a time.

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