The chain of IITs on Monday unanimously rejected a HRD Ministry proposal to impose ‘reforms’ in the Joint Entrance Examination (JEE) Advanced conducted for entry into the prestigious institutes.
The IITs in the Council of IITs’ meeting chaired by HRD Minister Prakash Javadekar pointed that the present system and the JEE were a result of hard work of over years and any ‘tweaking’ of the system was not desired. The IITs scored a point and HRD Ministry finally gave up even the idea of change of pattern of allocation of trades and institutions as per rankings since the IITs said the current format has been operating smoothly.
The JEE Advanced determines admission to all IITs and is considered one of the toughest entrance examinations in the country. “All the IIT Directors and Chairpersons underlined at the meeting that the aim should be to strengthen the current system rather than move in a direction that could undermine the credibility of the IITs and the JEE in any way,” said a source.
The IIT council rejected both ideas by the HRD Ministry viz. to set up an expert committee to make the JEE Advanced ‘more scientific’ and to ‘reduce dependence on coaching centres’ and to change allocation system of selected students— from branch of engineering to institution wise allocation.
Sources said the first suggestion for revamping IIT education was based on a proposal that sought dismantling of the JEE Advanced exam and second was doing away with the flagship B Tech courses at IITs and converting IITs into high end institutes that offer post graduate education and only certain semesters of teaching to near 80,000 students a year instead of the current 10,000 plus.
Sources said that the IITs officials conveyed that the changes had already been brought in the JEE system by going online and further improvement in questions could be attempted rather than radical reforms. The IIT Council is headed by the HRD Minister and the Ministry finally went with the IIT view as it felt that the need for reform must be driven by the institutions and when they feel the need or them thus also keeping their autonomy intact.
The 52nd meeting of the IIT Council also agreed to a key demand by the IITs to relax fee for foreign student which currently stands at Rs six lakh per annum and is viewed as steep by many. The Council has now allowed each IIT’s Board of Governors to decide on fee for foreign students.
While briefing the media later about the meeting and decisions taken by the Council, Javadekar highlighted some of the major decisions which includes IIT will mentor at least five engineering colleges located in its vicinity in order to improve the quality and standard of engineering education in the country.
“There will be no revision in tuition fee being charged from the undergraduate students in IITs and the Boards of Governors of the individual IITs have been empowered to decide the fee for international students,” Javadekar said. He also briefed that the issue of vacant seats in the M.Tech. programmes in IITs due to students joining Public Sector Undertakings (PSUs) after being admitted will be addressed in a separate meeting with the CMDs of major PSUs.
Besides a committee comprising of Directors of IIT Delhi, IIT Hyderabad and IIT Tirupati has been constituted to recommend standards and norms for construction of campuses and infrastructure projects in IITs.