New Delhi, October 20
Much before Union Human Resource Development Minister Kapil Sibal mentioned the need to raise the bar for entry to IITs, these institutes had recommended tougher eligibility criteria for students taking the Joint Entrance Examination (JEE) to limit the numbers sitting for the test and ensure highest quality of entrants.

The focus, IITs believe, must be on school board examinations and conceptual learning so that the highest quality students enter the premiere institutes instead of the “current coached breed” which believes in “ends justify means” attitude.

Minister backtracks After Bihar CM Nitish Kumar wrote to Sibal on Tuesday, slamming his “85 per cent cut-off for JEE eligibility” talk as “elitist” and “discriminatory”, the minister, fearing further political backlash, clarified that the government had no role or jurisdiction in deciding IIT selection criteria. “The only decision taken in the IIT Council meeting on Monday was that the IITs will submit a report in January, 2010, to rationalise the JEE. They will decide what weightage to give to Class XII exam and whether marks or percentiles should be the basis of admission.

“Coaching institutes have made a mockery of our school education and the JEE has become an examination which can be cleared only by the coached though it is meant to find students with raw intelligence at the higher secondary level. Students who have skipped three years of schooling to attend coaching acquire “ends justify means” attitude. It is these students who resort to habitual cogging at IITs subsequently,” the IIT committee’s internal note on JEE states, admitting that the examination system needs reform to get intelligent minds.

The note, discussed on August 23 this year, lists a major JEE reform recommendation that was never implemented. It seeks to permit students in the upper 2 per cent of Class X and XII (to be determined by school boards) to take the JEE to limit the numbers taking the test to 10 times the seats available.

IITs further said in the August 23 meeting that though on the recommendation of the CBSE chairman, 60 per cent in Class XII boards was accepted as the eligibility cut-off for the JEE, the same was too low.

“This number is too low to make any difference to the numbers taking the exam. These numbers are increasing every year and strain on the system growing without showing any signs of reaching a plateau. A reconsideration of this recommendation is overdue,” the note mentions.

The committee, in fact, while taking a serious note of the mammoth growth of teaching shops, wants these centres to focus on Class XII boards instead. “Intensive coaching burns the students out, killing their creativity and ability to think independently. Thus the quality of a significant fraction of students gaining admissions through this process is a cause for serious concern. With the suggested reform (read raising the 60 per cent bar and having the top cream at school take the JEE), it is hoped that the coaching institutions will shift their focus on board exams,” the IITs feel.

It is in the background of this note, which again came up for discussions at the IIT Council meet yesterday (meet happened after five years), that Sibal talked of raising the eligibility cut-off for taking the JEE.

The IITs will submit a proposal to the government to rationalise the JEE. The committee may well settle for huge weightage for Class X and XII board marks for IIT selection and a common aptitude test.