Come 2013, engineering entrance examinations like IIT
JEE and AIEEE
will be scrapped. IIT Council has decided
to have a common entrance test for IITs/NITs, state government-run
and private engineering colleges throughout the country from 2013.
This is not the only major decision the council has taken. It also
decided to go in for a complicated fee hike structure. But there is
a catch - both the decisions are subject to approval from the state
governments and the finance ministry. In case this decision to hold
the common examination does not meet the states' approval, only
IITs/NITs - under the central government - would have a common
entrance test.
The fee structure decided by the Council, the highest
decision-making body of the IITs, is complicated. While all
aspirants at the time of admission will pay the existing fee, after
they pass out 25% of students (other than SCs/STs/OBCs) who can
afford the hike of Rs 1.5 lakh to Rs 2 lakh suggested by Anil
Kakodkar committee, would be made to pay the amount to their
institutions in easy installments.
When we asked HRD minister
Kapil Sibal how this would be implemented, Sibal
said employers would pay to the IIT.
Under the proposed law that would allow dematerialisation of
certificates in electronic format, employers would cross-check the
validity of certificates from government and then they would be
told to pay a part of salary of the student directly to the
institute.
This would only be possible when the student is asked to sign a
bond at the time of admission. However, what is not clear is what
will happen to a student who starts his own business? What happens
to students who join a foreign firm in a foreign country?
Another exception to this payback rule will be if the student
pursues higher studies like M.Tech and subsequently Ph.D. However,
the entire formulation on fee has to meet the approval of finance
ministry.
As for the common entrance test for all engineering exams, what
has been decided by the T Ramaswami committee is a new kind of
Joint Entrance Examination where weightage would
be given to class XII marks of students
and a Scholastic Aptitude Test-kind of test.
While the committee has given various options, no final decision
has been taken on which option will be adopted. Talking about this,
Sibal said it had not been decided how much weightage would be
given to class XII marks and the
SAT-like test. The marks scored by
students in class XII would be
'normalised' through a formula devised by experts of the Indian
Statistical Institute.
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