I had originally thought of collecting all arguments and publishing them in a single post, but it would have been far too long for one post; I felt that it my article could be divided into three logically distinct components:
1) Some background on myself, and my recollections of higher-secondary schoolteachers, preparing for the JEE and so on;
2) My opinion on the MHRD's suggested pattern; Also, an FAQ section which I may update from time to time.
3) Some constructive suggestions: How can the system be improved?
The following is Part 3. (Click on these links to access Part 1 and Part 2.)
This post contains some constructive suggestions proposed by others, and some which are original. In any case, I would like to state the following before I offer suggestions:
I am not required to do so. Even if I have no suggestions to offer, the onus is still upon you to prove that your proposed changes are better than status quo. I have the right to protest against bad decisions.
In any case, here are the suggestions:
A) Short-term suggestions (i.e. those which can be put into effect immediately, and will begin to show results immediately)
1) (Sources: Jishnu Bhattacharya and @Piyush on Prof. Sanghi's blog) Hold the JEE as it has always been held, but use it only for selection, not for ranking. In any case, first-year syllabus is common for all students; let them fill in their preferences after their first year. Let every department use any combination it wishes of JEE rank and various first-year subjects to admit students. (e.g. CSE may give more weight to MTH and Programming, CE may give more weight to PHY102 and JEE rank, etc.) This will have another deeply beneficial effect: It is observed that students, when they taste freedom for the first time, suddenly lose interest in studies. This pattern may force them to study in at least their first year; it is hoped that the momentum thus gained will push them through their degree. In any case, this measure will probably greatly reduce stress faced during entrance exams.
2) Remove as far as possible the red tape involved in setting up a school. In particular, remove the requirement that a school must have a primary and secondary section in order to have a higher secondary section. Let there be leniency in availability of infrastructure. This will mean that several sub-standard schools will be set up, but it is the responsibility of the student to ensure that the school he applies to is good enough for him. Most importantly, remove the silly requirement that higher-secondary teachers should be B.Sc./M.Sc - B.Ed. Everyone knows that Class XII physics is as close to B.Sc. level physics as it is to B.E. level engineering, any stream. (In fact, I believe mechanical engineers might actually be learning stuff closer to Class XII physics than physicists themselves.) And a B.Ed. degree is fine upto a class X teacher, but not required for the presumably more mature class XI and class XII students.
This way, many Coaching classes will hopefully convert themselves into higher-secondary schools. Students will no longer have to put up with the farce of attending another school (where they don't study), hence alleviating stress, if only a little bit.
[Update: Such 'junior colleges' already exist in Maharashtra and Assam, and I have heard of one higher-secondary school coming up already in Gujarat (interestingly, set up by a former coaching class teacher). It is quite possible that different State Boards have different criteria - in that case, ensure uniformity across the nation. The rest of my points about the B.Sc./M.Sc. requirement and the B.Ed. requirement, are still valid.]
3) (Source: IIT Council suggestion) The JEE-Main exam should be held more than once a year (Or it can follow the BITSAT pattern, spread over a longer period). That way, students can give the exam whenever they are ready. Anyway, hold this test only for the purpose of screening. Sure, students will be stressed when they give the JEE-Advanced examination, but if they can't handle that much stress, there's nothing we can really do. All alternatives will be stressful. Besides, they need to cope up with stressful situations in order to gain the most from IIT.
B) Long-term suggestions (i.e. those which need time to put into effect, or those which take time to yield results)
1) Increase the quality of education in other universities, and try to ensure that no good student has to go through a lot of pain to secure a good seat. Start by slowly, and selectively, granting autonomy to all Universities. (Start with Calcutta University, good colleges of the Delhi University, the other Presidency Colleges, MSU Baroda, etc.) One of the primary reasons for the success of the IITs has been the autonomy granted to professors, and the freedom granted to students. If professors are free to decide the contents, examination pattern, and grading of a course, they will teach in an entirely different manner. Not all professors will teach better, but it is hoped that a majority will respond positively to this. Once the cycle is started (good profs->good students->good profs), I hope the level of education (which is shamefully low now) will improve.
2) Do away with all textbooks, except the NCERT one (which should be written only by experts in the relevant field, as, I believe, is done today). Also ensure that there is no binding, legal or otherwise, to limit the syllabus to the textbook, in any exam, including the Boards. This way, students will learn to think beyond the textbook. Sure, this way authors of commercial textbooks will make a killing, but students will soon realise that the quality of a textbook has nothing to do with its price. (NCERT textbooks are good today. Also, look at Irodov - although it is not a textbook, it is quite inexpensive. I can provide countless other examples. Hall & Knight. S. L. Loney - the list is endless.)
3) Provide plenty of scholarships to the less privileged (in any sense - poor students or those from rural areas, for instance), on the basis of all of the following: (There could be a quota for each) i) Class X exams ii) NTSE exams iii) Olympiads iv) KVPY v) Any other exams which I may have missed or which may come up later. Let every state Government tie up with several coaching classes, and partially pay the fees, in addition to providing such students with free lodging. Let the rest of the fees be borne by the coaching institutes themselves. (They will agree to do so, not just out of a sense of duty, but out of the pragmatic desire to improve their results. Who will leave the chance to coach a bunch of good students, and garner social support in the process?) If the problem is where to get the money from, register all coaching institutes and charge an 'education tax' of, say, 5% per enrolled student. This will not make much of a difference to the privileged. I have not worked out the numbers, but I am sure you can finance hundreds (if not more) scholarships per state this way. Another major advantage of this is that it will completely remove the need for reservation - a policy that has done much to harm the state of education in all IITs and, indeed, in the nation.
1) Some background on myself, and my recollections of higher-secondary schoolteachers, preparing for the JEE and so on;
2) My opinion on the MHRD's suggested pattern; Also, an FAQ section which I may update from time to time.
3) Some constructive suggestions: How can the system be improved?
The following is Part 3. (Click on these links to access Part 1 and Part 2.)
This post contains some constructive suggestions proposed by others, and some which are original. In any case, I would like to state the following before I offer suggestions:
I am not required to do so. Even if I have no suggestions to offer, the onus is still upon you to prove that your proposed changes are better than status quo. I have the right to protest against bad decisions.
In any case, here are the suggestions:
A) Short-term suggestions (i.e. those which can be put into effect immediately, and will begin to show results immediately)
1) (Sources: Jishnu Bhattacharya and @Piyush on Prof. Sanghi's blog) Hold the JEE as it has always been held, but use it only for selection, not for ranking. In any case, first-year syllabus is common for all students; let them fill in their preferences after their first year. Let every department use any combination it wishes of JEE rank and various first-year subjects to admit students. (e.g. CSE may give more weight to MTH and Programming, CE may give more weight to PHY102 and JEE rank, etc.) This will have another deeply beneficial effect: It is observed that students, when they taste freedom for the first time, suddenly lose interest in studies. This pattern may force them to study in at least their first year; it is hoped that the momentum thus gained will push them through their degree. In any case, this measure will probably greatly reduce stress faced during entrance exams.
2) Remove as far as possible the red tape involved in setting up a school. In particular, remove the requirement that a school must have a primary and secondary section in order to have a higher secondary section. Let there be leniency in availability of infrastructure. This will mean that several sub-standard schools will be set up, but it is the responsibility of the student to ensure that the school he applies to is good enough for him. Most importantly, remove the silly requirement that higher-secondary teachers should be B.Sc./M.Sc - B.Ed. Everyone knows that Class XII physics is as close to B.Sc. level physics as it is to B.E. level engineering, any stream. (In fact, I believe mechanical engineers might actually be learning stuff closer to Class XII physics than physicists themselves.) And a B.Ed. degree is fine upto a class X teacher, but not required for the presumably more mature class XI and class XII students.
This way, many Coaching classes will hopefully convert themselves into higher-secondary schools. Students will no longer have to put up with the farce of attending another school (where they don't study), hence alleviating stress, if only a little bit.
[Update: Such 'junior colleges' already exist in Maharashtra and Assam, and I have heard of one higher-secondary school coming up already in Gujarat (interestingly, set up by a former coaching class teacher). It is quite possible that different State Boards have different criteria - in that case, ensure uniformity across the nation. The rest of my points about the B.Sc./M.Sc. requirement and the B.Ed. requirement, are still valid.]
3) (Source: IIT Council suggestion) The JEE-Main exam should be held more than once a year (Or it can follow the BITSAT pattern, spread over a longer period). That way, students can give the exam whenever they are ready. Anyway, hold this test only for the purpose of screening. Sure, students will be stressed when they give the JEE-Advanced examination, but if they can't handle that much stress, there's nothing we can really do. All alternatives will be stressful. Besides, they need to cope up with stressful situations in order to gain the most from IIT.
B) Long-term suggestions (i.e. those which need time to put into effect, or those which take time to yield results)
1) Increase the quality of education in other universities, and try to ensure that no good student has to go through a lot of pain to secure a good seat. Start by slowly, and selectively, granting autonomy to all Universities. (Start with Calcutta University, good colleges of the Delhi University, the other Presidency Colleges, MSU Baroda, etc.) One of the primary reasons for the success of the IITs has been the autonomy granted to professors, and the freedom granted to students. If professors are free to decide the contents, examination pattern, and grading of a course, they will teach in an entirely different manner. Not all professors will teach better, but it is hoped that a majority will respond positively to this. Once the cycle is started (good profs->good students->good profs), I hope the level of education (which is shamefully low now) will improve.
2) Do away with all textbooks, except the NCERT one (which should be written only by experts in the relevant field, as, I believe, is done today). Also ensure that there is no binding, legal or otherwise, to limit the syllabus to the textbook, in any exam, including the Boards. This way, students will learn to think beyond the textbook. Sure, this way authors of commercial textbooks will make a killing, but students will soon realise that the quality of a textbook has nothing to do with its price. (NCERT textbooks are good today. Also, look at Irodov - although it is not a textbook, it is quite inexpensive. I can provide countless other examples. Hall & Knight. S. L. Loney - the list is endless.)
3) Provide plenty of scholarships to the less privileged (in any sense - poor students or those from rural areas, for instance), on the basis of all of the following: (There could be a quota for each) i) Class X exams ii) NTSE exams iii) Olympiads iv) KVPY v) Any other exams which I may have missed or which may come up later. Let every state Government tie up with several coaching classes, and partially pay the fees, in addition to providing such students with free lodging. Let the rest of the fees be borne by the coaching institutes themselves. (They will agree to do so, not just out of a sense of duty, but out of the pragmatic desire to improve their results. Who will leave the chance to coach a bunch of good students, and garner social support in the process?) If the problem is where to get the money from, register all coaching institutes and charge an 'education tax' of, say, 5% per enrolled student. This will not make much of a difference to the privileged. I have not worked out the numbers, but I am sure you can finance hundreds (if not more) scholarships per state this way. Another major advantage of this is that it will completely remove the need for reservation - a policy that has done much to harm the state of education in all IITs and, indeed, in the nation.
The idea of using JEE as a selection criterion and then using first year experiences to allocate branches is good but in the Indian context given how crazy most of our students are it is hard.
ReplyDeleteYou and I know very well that barring a few maybe 10% of the JEE merit list the other 90% select major,campus solely on the basis of placements,location I have seen a friend with an AIR of 1150 because of him wanting to go only to IITB he ended up with a major he wouldnt want in his nightmare(Engineering Physics).So now in his final year he is doing CFA too.
Students and worse their parents ask their engineer friends on which branch their ward should opt for rather than the student seeing the syllabus and then deciding where his interests lie.Take your state Gujarat for instance almost every kid with a good boards score wants to opt for ECE.Mechanical,Civil are seen as useless branches by them.
In the US this method of branch allocation is being used and can be used because the students there have a different approach unlike here.I remember when my brother opted to study Math and CS at Chennai Mathematical Institute most of his friend's parents asked him "Your institute doesn't have too many placements why are you going there despite cracking JEE??"
The fact is first even if you use JEE as a selection there are many students who end up with GPA's above 8.5,ofcourse the seats in many programs will fill real fast and in some seats might be vacant.In some branches we will have students who with good GPA's ended up in CSE,Electrical than students who really wanted to study in those branches.It is easier to get a good GPA than a top 200 JEE rank.
Thanks for the comment! In the present system as well most people do not get their desired branch. In any case, what I am suggesting is that you merely shift the process for choosing branch by one full year. Hopefully, by then students will have lived away from home for a long enough period, and they will have tasted a sufficient number of courses, so that they will begin to think about their interest. I agree, many students will still think only about placement. However, hopefully the number of students getting desired branches will increase by a little bit! (It cannot decrease, because as students explore, they will naturally come to prefer more off-beat branches.) Hopefully, in the long run this small increase will become a big increase!
DeleteYou will be surprised to know in the British rule era there used to be scholarships for the poor students for eg: A poor boys scholarship exam wherein poor students availing that scholarship would receive school education.
ReplyDeleteWhen the British left all this was scrapped and the great caste based reservations came into force.The school education pretty much took a toss after that and the good British style system remained in boarding schools from which till the 90's students cracked JEE with high ranks ofcourse in todays era with their exorbitant fees rich kids attend boarding schools and go on to study in the UK and the US after high school.
Thanks for the info! I didn't know about the British-era scholarships. I'll try to find out more about them.
DeleteRockin tanmay. I agree with you and this time i wont debate with you( like i used to do and ALWAYS WIN)
ReplyDeletekeep goin..
Jai hind Jai gandhi
x-posting from Dr. Sanghi's blog:
ReplyDelete@Tanmay
Your blog posts are well articulated. One minor quibble: the JEE is not a direct test of "intelligence" (as an IQ test might be). It is test of knowledge. That it is also a proxy for intelligence is likely but that is indirect. A person with high IQ but no knowledge will flunk the JEE.
In the real world, verbal ability (written and spoken) is important. It would be nice to ensure that IIT students have adequate to excellent verbal skills when they graduate. Clearly, in your case, the written skills are well above average. But I have to wonder about the typical IIT graduate (likely, average or below average, relative to international norms for university graduates from reasonable places). All elite American universities demand that their undergraduates take a few 1-credit writing courses (even students who have maxed out the SAT verbal). Writing is a skill that needs practice and feedback and the marginal effect of a few writing courses can be out of proportion to the time spent.