The
government is considering conducting a single entrance examination for
admission to all engineering colleges, including private institutions, across
the country.
The proposed joint entrance examination (JEE) for engineering
colleges, which is said to be human resource development (HRD) minister Prakash
Javadekar brainchild, could kick in from 2018.
It is aimed at
bringing transparency to the admission procedure, including checking the
practice in some private institutions of extracting a heavy capitation fee from
students.
“The aim is to make
the process more transparent, standardised, and free of corruption and
commercialisation,” a government official said.
India has more than
3,300 approved engineering colleges affiliated to universities, with an annual
approved intake of above 1.6 million students. But only about half of the seats
are filled.
The current admission
process at the graduation level is dependent on performance in entrance
examinations conducted by various agencies.
The Central Board of
Secondary Education (CBSE) conducts the JEE-Main for centre-funded
institutions. More than 1.3 million students write this examination every year.
The top-rankers from
JEE-Main are eligible to write the JEE-Advanced for the prestigious Indian
Institutes of Technology (IIT). In the new system, students aspiring for the
IITs will have to pass the nationwide common entrance test with high marks and
take the JEE-Advanced.
These apart, a number
of states conduct their own test. Others grant admission based on marks
obtained in class 12.
Several private
colleges have their individual entrance examinations. But “some of them, which
are self-financed, charge high fees or sell seats in the name of management or
NRI quota at a premium”, a source said.
Only a handful of
students crack the tough exams set for top colleges such as the IITs, leaving
thousands of aspiring engineers to dash for private institutions, many of which
are notorious teaching shops.
These colleges have
become a magnet for mostly middle-class families in a country where an
engineering degree is considered a ticket to a lifetime of fat pay cheques or
jobs in the US.
Some of the private
colleges admit students without basic talent and aptitude for engineering,
affecting overall quality, the source said.
Of the 737,000
graduates in 2014-15, only half found employment. Most of the students didn’t
meet expectations of companies offering jobs.
The proposal for a
single, nationwide test is viewed as an attempt to streamline the dysfunctional
education system. It was discussed at a recent meeting of officials from the
HRD ministry and the All-India Council for Technical Education (AICTE), the regulator
for engineering colleges.
The council will issue
regulations for the examination. Issues such as the number of times the
examination would be conducted in a year and the minimum qualification marks
are yet to be worked out.
A source said the
AICTE is planning to conduct web-based counselling sessions for admissions to
engineering colleges based on students’ all-India ranking obtained in the
entrance examination.
“States would be
invited to join the counselling process to fill the seats in colleges under
their jurisdiction,” the source said.
The states will be
able to prescribe their admission criteria, apart from the score in the
entrance test. The JEE score will, however, be the minimum eligibility
criteria, the source said.
Source: Hindustan Times dated 23 December, 2016.
Link:
