The story of the IITs

The way it started

8 March 2010: Consequent to the decision in the Retreat of IIT Directors and Chairpersons held at Manesar on 4 February 2010, HRD Ministry forms a Committee headed by Damodar Acharya (Director, IIT Kharagpur) to look into the "streamlining and rationalizing" of JEE, GATE, JMET, JAM, etc. The committee submits an interim report emphasizing the need to change the existing system of multiple examinations that has encouraged proliferation of coaching and has apparently failed to produce a merit list that can correlate with good performance in engineering programmes.

10 September 2010: Council of IITs decides to set up (see minutes, page 9) T. Ramasami Committee, an extension of Acharya Committee, to assess the examination and admission system to engineering programmes, with a view to reducing the burden on students on account of multiplicity of entrance examinations (JEE, AIEEE etc.).

The way it developed

11 November 2010: Ramasami Committee is formed. The Committee draws up a plan for an alternative test scheme that utilizes Board scores and scores of a national level examination for all engineering admissions. T. Ramasami (Secretary, Department of Science and Technology) approaches ISI regarding making board scores comparable.

September 2011: ISI provides input, saying that treating percentile scores of students in their respective boards at par would be the only logical and fair way to normalize different board scores.

14 September 2011: Ramasami Committee makes a proposal to the Council of IITs, seeking to replace the present admission system by an alternative test scheme. According to this scheme, there would be two common national examinations for engineering admissions, including an aptitude test and an advanced test, and IIT admissions would be based on a criterion (possibly from one of the six suggested options) that gives weightage to the common national examination as well as Class XII board marks normalized on the basis of percentiles (as proposed by ISI). The Council accepts this recommendation in principle, (see minutes, page 8) and asks Ramasami Committee to finalize its report, which can be placed before Central Advisory Board of Education and State Education Ministers for a final decision so that the new system could be put in place by academic session 2013-14. The recommendations for the common entrance examination for IITs and NITs are communicated through a press conference held after the Council meeting.

November 2011: Ramasami Committee submits report, with ISI input in appendix. In this report, ISI support is used in respect of normalization of board scores only, and not in specifying the roles of common national examinations. The proposal for a common admission test for engineering admissions, based on national examination as well as Class XII normalized board marks is ratified separately in the Council of IIITs and the Council of NITs (see minutes of joint meeting of councils, page 2).

22 February 2012: The alternative test scheme proposal of the Ramasami Committee is accorded "in-principle" approval by the State Education Ministers (see minutes of subsequent Council meeting, page 2).

The way it ended

11 April 2012 : Prior to implementation, the Hon’ble Minister of MHRD discusses the decision with the Chairmen, the Boards of Governors and the Directors of IITs. He also discusses separately with All India IIT Faculty Federation, while a "Core Committee of senior academics" interacts with "the faculties of some of the IIT’s" on the same.

25 April – 5 May 2012: The Senates of seven older IITs take divergent views regarding IIT admissions, ranging from complete support for the Ramasami Committee proposal approved by the Council of IITs, to retention of the then prevailing admission system with minor modifications.

12 May 2012: Council of IITs forms consensus to use Board percentiles as well as JEE-Main (aptitude test) scores only as cut-off, and to use JEE-Advanced (continuation of the IIT-JEE conducted till 2012) alone while preparing the merit list for 2013 admissions. The Council also opines that all other Centrally Funded Technical Institutions (CFTI) including NITs would prepare merit list by using Board percentiles, JEE-Main and JEE-Advanced with 40%, 30% and 30% weights, respectively. There is no final decision though. It is decided that there should be discussion with "faculty representatives, two each from the seven older IITs" before any final decision is taken on the matter.

28 May 2012: The Councils of IITs, NITs and IIITs hold a joint meeting and watch a detailed power point presentation on a proposal for procedure of admission to CFTIs, along with "the rationale, eligibility criteria, the mythology of selection and governance structure that were proposed". After an "open house" discussion, they reach unanimity on the undecided consensus view of the Council of IITs to use different criteria for IITs and other CFTIs. There is also a consensus that the Joint Admissions Board of the IIT system should have complete control over the conduct of JEE-Advanced, while a separate Joint Admissions Board with representatives from IITs, NITs, other CFTIs and State Governments should conduct JEE-Main. The Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) could provide administrative support for both the examinations.

June 2012: IIT Faculty and alumni sustain pressure on the government to ensure that there is no common entrance test, with some threatening to go for a public interest litigation and others threatening to go on hunger strike on the issue, emulating an earlier hunger strike in protest against non-implementation of the recommendations of the Sixth Pay Commission.

27 June 2012: Council of IITs formally decides to set JEE-Main rank among top 150,000 as cut off for eligibility to appear in JEE-Advanced, and 80^th percentile in Class XII Board examination as eligibility to gain admission to IITs based on JEE-Advanced performance. It decides to conduct JEE-Advanced through an exclusive Joint Admission Board and a Joint Implementation Committee.

Epilogue

An analysis of the admissions data of IIT-JEE 2012 reveals that a disproportionately small number of students from villages and lower income groups registered for that examination. Among the candidates who registered, those from the higher income group had four times higher success rate in comparison with those from the lower income group. Candidates from cities had higher success rates than other groups. The findings strongly point towards the effect of coaching. Many students lacking access to coaching apparently do not even register. Overall, the IIT system ends up picking more than half of their students from a single board that represents only about 6% of the students passing Class XII. Keeping faith in an admission system that relies on such a narrow supply base requires a lot of faith.

Before the final decision on the matter of admissions was taken by the Council of the IITs, the Hon'ble Minister, HRD, had written to it: "Coaching institutions have gradually replaced our secondary schools. … We are creating an army of children adept at cracking examinations but can they think critically?" On the other hand, the All India IIT Faculty Federation had reminded the Council that the majority of the Senates of the seven older IITs want continuation of the present system of preparing the final merit list on the basis of a version of IIT-JEE, and demanded that "the collective majority views of the various senates must be upheld". The ultimate decision of the Council to reverse its earlier decision and to side with the Faculty Federation took place after it became clear that the twin imperatives of giving "due weightage to the performance of the students in class XII board examination" and addressing "the concerns of the IIT fraternity" (see minutes of joint meeting of councils, page 2) cannot be reconciled.