What Ails JEE?
What Ails JEE?
JEE is one of the
best-administered examinations in this country, but that is not the same as
being one of the best examinations. When we think of JEE, we tend to think of
its outstanding administrative aspects. This preoccupation with the
administrative aspects of JEE has blinded us to the basic purpose of the whole
exercise, viz., that it is an examination. We tend to equate the quality
of the examination with the quality of its administration, which has led to
widespread smugness about the examination itself.
Those who have been directly
involved with JEE have had different perceptions about reform. Mostly, I
suspect, reform has not been on the agenda. When reform has been attempted (and
IITK has always been the principal instigator in initiating ideas for reform),
it has been directed mostly towards the administrative aspects. I feel, however,
that the quality of the examination is what we need to focus on.
The Question Papers
The most serious drawback of
JEE stems from the level at which questions are set. It is no secret that even
selected candidates score abysmally low marks. This compromises the selection
process. JEE was supposed to be a competitive examination; it has ended up as a
qualifying examination. In a true competitive examination, every candidate will
try to maximise his score. In JEE, the candidate knows in advance that his
chances of getting a good score are very small. Most students, therefore, adopt
a strategy to get through JEE. The idea is to ensure a certain minimum
score and not to try for a high score which would be uncertain. Now that we have
a two-tier JEE, the Main Examination continues to be flawed in this respect and
there is no reason to believe that things will improve in the foreseeable
future.
The problem will not go away
until our basic mindset changes. Across the IITs, there is a deep-rooted belief
that because JEE is the examination of the IITs, it must be of a standard that
is much higher than that of other institutions. I have repeatedly heard the
argument that the JEE question papers have helped in raising the standards of
education in our country. Another argument often heard is that the coaching
establishments are providing education of a high standard. These arguments fly
in the face of the obvious fact that the average standard of our students has
been falling over the past decade and a half. JEE has spawned a regime of
science education through problem solving, in which comprehension is equated
with the ability to work out the answers to outlandish, tricky problems. The
more such problems that a student knows, the more acceptable he is to JEE. The
little exposure that I have had to the methodology of the coaching
establishments tells me that they do not educate; they break up the material
into little modules that consist of problem types and the student learns to
recognise and deal with hundreds of such problems. Understanding of the concepts
has nothing to do with it.
I agree that the question
papers of JEE should be a notch harder than those of the standard higher
secondary board examinations, but they should be only reasonably harder. That is
not the way it is at present. JEE question papers have no relation at all to
what a student is expected to do at school. Preparation for the school
examinations and JEE are mutually exclusive (excepting for the student of truly
rare ability), therefore it is no surprise that about 60 percent of the intake
every year consists of candidates attempting JEE for the second or third time.
According to the structure of our education system, students are supposed to
join the IITs immediately after they finish school. If JEE militates against
that scheme, surely everything is not all right.
It is argued that, if the
examination were any easier, it would be impossible to discriminate and select
students. The fact is that, even now, we are not doing a very good job of
discriminating. The examination is so hard and the scores so low, that chance
plays a very big part. Who would be so brave as to assert that, of two
low-scoring students in a low scoring examination, one is better than the other?
Or that the student who just missed the cut is inferior? In my opinion, the
successful candidates of JEE can be divided into three groups. These divisions
would be, roughly, the first three hundred ranks, then the next five or six
hundred ranks and finally all the others who are ranked below, say, nine
hundred. On another day, the members of this third group may not make the cut at
all.
Why do we need JEE? I believe
we need it only because we cannot trust the results of the higher secondary
boards. The other reason that is cited, viz., that it serves to normalise
students from various boards across the land, is only of secondary importance
because, if all board results could be trusted, we would by now have rated the
various boards and conducted our admissions on the basis of those ratings. All
we need is a clean examination, not necessarily a brutal one. If this
examination were easier, if it were only moderately harder than the school
examinations, a number of benefits would follow immediately. Preparation for the
school examinations would constitute perhaps eighty percent of the preparation
for JEE. Students who are so inclined, would have more time to invest in
understanding the concepts and would, thereby, be better educated. The coaching
establishments (they are here to stay) would be encouraged to stress concepts as
the only sure
means to success. The young of this country will once
again have the time to indulge in teen-age diversions. Those who finally make it
to the IITs will do so without having suffered severe trauma and burnout. A
reasonable examination will be to the advantage of the naturally talented child.
Why have we been so singularly
ineffective in reforming this examination which Newsweek magazine has
recently referred to as "this notorious examination"? I do not have all the
answers, but some explanations are obvious. I believe that the most significant
factor
is our inability to appreciate that the candidates for JEE are
school students, coupled with our ignorance of the standards of school
examinations. Perhaps we have the subconscious notion that we are testing IIT
material. Perhaps we are shackled by the level at which we teach our core
courses. Another possible factor is our constant phobia about the coaching
institutions. The race between these institutions and the JEE paper setters is a
vicious and self-nourishing cycle. Some would suggest that the methodology of
JEE paper-setting is itself flawed; I subscribe to the view that committees
cannot set good papers, they can only make good compromises. Whatever the
reasons behind the prevalent character of the JEE question papers, one very
significant fact is that the paper setters almost never concede that their
papers were unduly hard. Those who set the monstrous mathematics papers of
JEE-86 and JEE-87 kept on insisting, even after the debacle, that the papers
were not unreasonable. There being no reason to doubt their sincerity, one may
infer that they suffered from having no benchmark against which to gauge their
papers.
Reform of the examination
itself can come only after we accept that reform is needed. The Joint
Implementation Committee of JEE has been at pains, in the past few years, to
impress upon the paper setters the need for easier papers. This seems to have
had some effect, but not enough. I am convinced that the paper setters need
better guidance. I think, therefore, that the time has come for the JEE
Information Brochure to prescribe textbooks. Not only would that set a benchmark
for the paper setters, it may also improve the quality of the study that the
student does. Counter arguments to the effect that we would thereby promote the
sales of particular books ought to be dismissed outright; we promote the sales
of particular books every time we go to teach a course. Besides, introducing the
student to a good book is an acknowledged responsibility of the teacher.
IIT Kanpur has just conducted
CPMT-2000. It is interesting to note the experience with the CPMT question
papers. It was a high-scoring examination. The correlation between the overall
CPMT percentage scores and those of the High School examinations of the
corresponding candidates was a straight line with a slope of roughly 1.5; the
candidate whose High School percentage was 60 would expect a CPMT percentage of
40. This indicated that the question papers were moderately difficult, as they
should be. They were not forbidding, as are the JEE papers. Certainly there was
bunching, but the selected candidates were bunched in the high score regime and
not, as in JEE, at very low scores. Particularly gratifying were the results in
the Physics paper; the scores of the successful candidates tailed off steeply
from very good to good and were nicely dispersed, with the result that the
Physics paper determined the ranking. Significantly, the paper setters for CPMT
were furnished with reference books.
The Impact on School
Education and Society
Preparing for the school
examinations does not prepare a student for JEE. There are schools across the
country which encourage their better students to miss classes in order to be
able to attend coaching schools and otherwise prepare for JEE. Elsewhere,
students who are serious about JEE skip school of their own accord. Our own
Central School on the campus no longer permits students to absent themselves,
leading one to wonder whether there is a connection between this and the current
run of very low success rate in JEE.
Bad as the situation was
earlier, it has been made worse by the introduction of the Screening Test. The
Screening Test is desirable from the viewpoint of JEE, for all the reasons that
are usually cited. Unfortunately, it comes in the middle of the school year. The
student is now faced with a difficult choice. He either forgets JEE for the
year, or neglects school. JEE now intrudes deeper into school education. One is
tempted to predict that the percentage of second-timers in the JEE merit list
will increase.
Schooling is not just about
learning academic skills. Schooling is for "education" and education, as the
saying goes, is what is left after what is learnt is forgotten. Education is
imbibed as much in the classroom as on the playing fields and through the
pursuit of intellectual co-curricular activities. Social interactions, which
prepare a person for life, used to be founded at school. If children do not go
to school, or if school ceases to fulfill its historical functions, society
loses.
Our own campus is witness to
the pernicious effects of JEE. Children stop playing while they are in class IX;
they never pick up the habit again. Although they are required to go to school,
they clearly regard it as a nuisance. There is a very recent trend towards
attending coaching classes in the city, which, in a city like Kanpur, presents
non-trivial logistical problems and is both debilitating and time-consuming. The
success rate of campus children in JEE has fallen to near zero largely, I
believe, because of the non-availability of quality coaching.
I am told that there was a time
in the dim and distant past when one just went and wrote JEE. There was no
special training involved. Then came the age of the correspondence course, when
Agarwal’s and Brilliant’s tutorials were all that were required to improve one’s
chances of success. Today that is no longer enough. Interactive coaching is
de riguer. There are coaching establishments that are residential in nature,
including one that requires the candidate’s mother to be in residence as well!
It is not difficult to foresee that what lies ahead is the emergence, on a wide
scale, of primary coaching institutions which will train students for admission
to the real McCoys! Is there to be no end to this madness?
Consider the average day in the
life of a sixteen-year-old who aspires to the prize of a seat in one of the
IIT’s. His day begins at five-thirty in the morning, when he takes a bus or a
tempo and travels many miles to a coaching class in Physics. When he returns
home, there is only time to rush and get ready for school, from where he goes
directly to another distant coaching class in Mathematics. It is eight o’clock
at night when he drags himself home for dinner. After dinner, there are problem
sheets to attack. While the rest of the family sleep, our protagonist burns the
midnight oil. Tomorrow is another day. Is this the life we wish for our
children?
JEE has spawned a system that
reduces young people to automatons, in more sense than one. They not only become
robots in academics, as all of us can see in our core teaching encounters, they
even resemble one another in personality. Gone are the sparkling eyes and
scintillating engagements that used to be the teacher’s joy in our core
programme. Today, our students are distinguishable from one another only by
their CPI’s. In terms of personality, they constitute a grey canvas, devoid of
colours.
Ironically, JEE has emasculated
school education instead of energising it. True, it has driven school boards to
formulate more and more modern (read advanced) syllabi, but the price has
been the loss of childhood and the death of innocence. It is no use saying that
JEE is not the only culprit and hence should not be held responsible; JEE
started it all. Why is it that countries that have relatively trivial school
curricula leave us far behind in every creative discipline? Surely there are
social factors responsible for this, but that is not the point. The point is
that advanced curricula and more intensive training do not, of their own, imply
quality education or spell progress. They only cause burnout at a regrettably
early age.
We often talk about the lack of
motivation that is evident in our students. If our curriculum is, indeed, the
best in this country, why should our students be so disinterested in their
academic work? And the problem extends beyond academics. In an institute where
the facilities for sport and hobbies are incomparably better than at any similar
place in this country, we have to force our students to go to the playing fields
through the device of the CPA. As for hobbies, the less said the better. This is
the profile of the typical IITK student — he does not study, he does not read,
he has no interest in hobbies and sport leaves him cold. Is it surprising that
the erstwhile Culfest has been replaced by an Antaragni whose high points, at
least in terms of student turnout, are Urvashi and Rithambara? Our own childhood
and youth were dramatically different; I daresay that they were richer. We could
afford the pleasures and reap the rewards of idleness. Obviously, there are many
explanations for this problem of de-motivation, foremost among them being,
perhaps, the forces that rule the job market. But the problem of lack of
motivation predates the emergence of the high-paying software-writing jobs.
There can be little doubt that the bruising JEE experience leads to burnout.
Further, no matter how challenging we consider our curriculum to be, it is hard
to believe that it measures up to JEE as a challenge. We should want our
students to begin to peak around the time that they are in the third year or
later, but surely the greatest demand on their resources occurs during their
preparation for JEE, and that is far too early!
Lack of Transparency
When he applies for JEE, the
candidate knows practically nothing about what is expected of him in the
examination. The only things he knows for sure are that the examination will be
very hard and that he will have to rank in the top three thousand or so. The
Information Brochure may tell him that he has to pass each of the three papers,
but will be silent as to the meaning of the "cut-offs". There is always a
procedure for setting the cut-offs, but JEE will not disclose that procedure to
the candidate. This mindset has infected the administration of the Screening
Test as well. The candidate is told that only those "who qualify the Screening
Test" will be permitted to write the Main Examination. How does one qualify the
Screening Test? Is there a pass mark? Are there three pass marks, one for each
subject? Is qualification based on the rank and not the score? The candidate who
invests so much time, emotion and hard work in this examination (not to speak of
money) has to participate in it without knowing the rules of the game! If he
fails to qualify, he never knows the grounds for his failure.
He never knows his performance
in terms of either his score or his relative standing. When the results are
announced, he is as much in the dark as the day he filled his application. He
does not know whether his toil had brought him near to his dream, or whether
another year of his young life ought to be invested in the Holy Grail of
technical education in India. Would anyone care to make a guess as to the number
of man-years that have been wasted in the futile pursuit of a dream that was
never on the cards? The Joint Admissions Board, of which the Directors are
members, is seized with this particular problem and a committee of former and
present Chairmen is debating this issue. If a break is made with past practices,
it will represent a revolution in JEE and then the time will be ripe to
re-examine the wider issues of transparency vis-à-vis secrecy.
As regards the Screening Test,
savvy coaching schools have already worked out that approximately twenty
thousand candidates are short-listed from the Screening Test. This information
has appeared in newspapers, courtesy the coaching schools who, for publicity,
contribute articles advising candidates on how to prepare in the final couple of
weeks before the Screening Test. How much better it would have been if we had
announced the basis of qualification from the Screening Test and not left it to
the coaching establishments. Score another round for the perennial "enemy"!
Apart from the members of the
Joint Implementation Committee, no one knows about the overall performance of
the candidates. Even the Directors stay in the dark and prefer to remain so,
such is the aura of secrecy that surrounds JEE. JEE is the holy cow that cannot
be dissected in the Senates of the IITs. Year after year, Chairmen present
reports to the Senates and, indeed, the All-India report to the Joint Admissions
Board, but these reports draw a veil on the most important data of all - how
successful was the examination; what were the highest and the lowest
totals attained by the successful candidates; what were the cut-off marks in the
three subjects; what was the distribution of the "bunching"!
When the CPMT came to IITK,
those of us who were given the responsibility of executing the job were filled
with foreboding. In the event, it did prove to be a harrowing task, but one fact
provided us with great satisfaction. At the end of the day, every candidate who
had paid an application fee knew the correct answers to the questions and could
confirm that he had obtained the correct score. Every candidate knew his rank as
well. Next year’s paper setters will have before them the complete information
on how the candidates scored in each subject. Given good intentions on the part
of next year’s CPMT administrators, real progress is possible. JEE could profit
from this experience.
The National Test
The national test has been
exercising our minds in the recent past, yet it has been on the cards for years.
I, personally, have been warning about it since 1986. The proliferation of
admission tests (if the IITs have it, so must we!) and the attendant harassment
of candidate and parent alike could not fail to concern the government forever.
We should have anticipated the national test and moved to pre-empt it.
As it stands, it is my belief
that we cannot fight off the government everlastingly. Since we cannot beat it,
it is time now for us to "join it". There can be little doubt that the national
test, in any other hands, will spell the doom of the standards of fairness and
rectitude that are the hallmarks of JEE. The only way out for us is to convince
the government that, if there is to be a national test, the IIT’s are the best
qualified to administer it.
The IITs are neither
technically equipped nor in possession of the requisite logistics for this
gargantuan task. The eventual approach must be to set up an organisation like
the ETS, which will function as an ancillary of the IITs. Chairmen from the six
IITs will constitute the apex body within this organisation, in the same way
that they currently constitute the Joint Implementation Committee of JEE.
Linkages will have to be put in place with institutions all over India, to help
conduct the test. All of that, however, is in the future.
For the present, the need is to
pre-empt the national test in the form in which it is being promoted. Towards
that end, JEE must open up and permit a few other institutions, notably those
that have indicated their willingness to join the national test, to use the
results of the Screening Test. In this endeavor, the government’s help will be
necessary. Thus, the government will have to be convinced to repose the
responsibility on the IITs. The number of admission tests will be reduced,
possibly buying us some time. There is some indication that Government would not
be entirely averse to such a plan.
What now?
How should we go about
reforming JEE? I believe that the first step must be to remove the veil of
secrecy. Considering that JEE alone brings bright students to the IITs and has a
direct bearing on the academic life at each IIT, it is a matter that should
concern the Senates. The Senates should demand and get the kind of information
that has been withheld from them all these years. Only through the airing of
hard information can the shortcomings of JEE be removed.
I have no illusions about the
effectiveness of the Senate, therefore this is not a plea for turning over the
administration of JEE to the Senate. My suggestion goes only as far as the
dissemination of information, based on which the Senate will pronounce on the
all-round health of JEE. The Senate’s role will be to judge and criticise. The
responsibility of instituting corrective measures will continue to rest with the
Joint Implementation Committee. The efforts of the Chairmen have yielded only
marginal results so far as the question papers are concerned; perhaps the
censure of the Senates will fetch a more positive response.
I do not feel that the
institution of a special committee will resolve the problems of JEE. Many such
committees have been set up; their recommendations, by and large, have gathered
dust. The introduction of the Screening Test, I believe, owes itself to
exigencies; the grading of so many answer books was simply becoming unmanageable
in logistical terms. The idea of the Screening Test has been around at least
since 1983. It was implemented at least seventeen years later, when it could no
longer be avoided. In this respect, reform came when it was no longer escapable,
not when it was thought to be desirable. Busy or not, it is the Chairmen, as
members of JIC, who will have to usher in reforms through JAB. It is the
Chairmen who will have to think about the problems and the solutions and it is
their responsibility to seek suggestions from those who have thought about JEE
down the years.
Which brings us to the
Screening Test. The scheduling of JEE in December or January cuts into the
school year and disrupts the preparation for the board examinations. This
schedule was drawn up purely for the convenience of the JEE administrators; no
consideration was given to the candidates or the impact on school education. JEE
has become so arrogant that it believes that all others must fit in with it; JEE
will make no concession to anybody. I believe it would be far more sensible to
schedule the Screening Test along with the Main Examination. That will return us
to the scheme that was practised a few years ago. That scheme was abandoned
because of objections raised over the fact that all the candidates will write
all the papers but they may not be graded. The interpretation of this objection
is that a student may not clear the Screening Test, yet do very well in the Main
Examination. Now that the December / January test is in force, it should
continue that way for another couple of years. Thereafter, it will be possible
for us to disclose statistics regarding the last Screening Test rank with which
a candidate is expected to qualify for admission through the Main Examination.
For example, if it is seen over a period of three years that the last successful
candidate comes from within the first six thousand ranks in the Screening Test,
the selection of 20,000 candidates for the Main Examination will be publicly
justified. Thereafter, the Screening and Main examinations should be conducted
contiguously in May.
The above comment on scheduling
presupposes that JEE will remain as it is. It will not work if additional
institutions are to make use of the results of the Screening Test. The Screening
Test being no more than a rating examination, the IITs as well as other
institutions will want to have their main examinations. The Screening Test would
not only have to be administered early, but should be conducted at least twice
every year.
The bottom line is that the
question papers must be reasonable. If there were thirty good engineering
schools in the country, it is conceivable that many of the bright students would
give JEE the miss. Many would question the advisability of going through the
trauma for the prize of studying at an IIT, when other good, if not equal,
options are on offer. Where would that leave us? In a way, we are exploiting our
unique standing. The gulf between the IITs and other schools have empowered us
to create the monster. We must de-claw this monster by our own conscious
decision. We owe it to the nation to return to our children the childhood and
the joy of learning that we have taken away from them.
B.N. Banerjee,
Department of Mechanical
Engineering
IIT Kanpur