Cover Story

Joint Entrance Examination : A Critique

The Joint Entrance Examination (JEE) conducted jointly by the six Indian Institutes of Technology is unarguably the most prestigious competitive examination conducted in the country. The reputation is based primarily on the squeakingly clean image that JEE has in the public perception. And this reputation is fully deserved. In an examination that has currently more than 1,20,000 boys and girls competing for a mere 3,000 or so most sought-after college seats, there has never been a public scandal. Surprisingly, the one-time incident involving leakage of question paper has perhaps added to the reputation of the Examination. This is so because the public appreciated the decisive administrative handling whereby a prompt decision was taken to cancel the examination already conducted, and that there was no attempt to hedge or delay matters as is the common experience with other large examinations.

The Strengths
The stakes for the candidates are pretty high. This, after all, is the gateway to perhaps the best in education that our country has to offer and to the most lucrative careers. The advertising pages of every newspaper or periodical and public walls in the smallest of townships bear witness to a flourishing industry spawned by this examination. It is estimated that JEE coaching business generates a GDP in excess of a thousand crore. However, this does not, strangely, translate into any business for the touts. In my association with the examination for two years, I was not approached by even one person for a `fix'. So is the experience of all others that I have talked to. It is clear that we have here a system so perceivably clean that nobody dares hope to be able to corrupt it. A banner achievement for our times indeed !

How have we been able to develop a system so transparently clean? The answer I believe lies in the pride that is associated with the immaculate image of the JEE. The pridepervades every level of the system. The unique administrative structure of the JEE is also a contributing factor. In fact, most IITs do not have a permanent organization for JEE. With one professor from each IIT on the implementation committee, the examination is organized by each IIT in turn. The implementation committee is for all practical purposes totally independent of the administration of the Institutes. The professors constituting this committee are quite insulated from the power brokers, unlike the university system.

JEE's unique system of physical verification of the identities of the candidates by its own representatives goes a long way in establishing the fairness of the examination. So also does the elaborate system of distributed information access, in which no single individual is privy to both the identities of the candidates and their performance. Incidentally, JEE is about the most candidate-friendly examination. For example, a candidate who cannot reach his designated centre for whatever reason is allowed to appear almost anywhere else, no question asked.

There have been remarkable innovations in the administration of the test over the past three years. Every aspect of the JEE operation has been re-thought, redesigned and implemented for greater efficiency. Some of the innovations include the following: a much simplified application form which depends completely on self-declaration by the candidates and does not require them to submit any documents; fully-automated handling of applications; pre-coded answer sheets for the objective examination; complete access for the candidates for their queries through 24-hour interactive voice-response telephony. Incidentally, this IIT can take the credit for initiating most of these innovations.

The Weaknesses

Though JEE is indisputably the best organized competitive entrance examination with a well-deserved reputation for honesty, it is far from what an ideal examination should be. In fact, some of us believe that the `above board' image of the JEE combined with the inherent attractiveness of an IIT education has had a deep impact on the society, which, in turn, has introduced gross distortions on the JEE itself. The problems are quite well understood but there is no unanimity on the possible solutions yet.

Most of what are seen as shortcomings of the JEE are a direct outcome of the supreme wish (and the resultant anxiety) of the parents of most of the high-school kids around the country. The anxiety translates into the only possible action they can think of: getting their kids admitted to a good coaching Institute, contact or postal. Those of us who set question papers for the JEE react to this situation and have been raising the level of the question papers steadily. The performance levels demanded in JEE today have no parity with what may be regarded as reasonably high expectations of scholastic achievement from a well-rounded secondary school student.

This in fact is a vicious cycle. The tougher the question papers, more is the dependence on intensive coaching at the cost of systematic scientific education. This has serious consequences because it leads to deterioration in the grasp of fundamental science that is essential for any creative endeavour. Let us not forget that teaching and coaching (as is practised by the JEE coaching schools) are two different kinds of things. Even the best of coaching does not attempt to clarify concepts. It does not inculcate the spirit of inquiry. It does not train persons in starting from the first principles. Instead, it relies on pattern recognition. Do enough problems so that when you see a problem in the exam, you can recall the special trick, the special integrating factor, substitution or whatever required to obtain the answer. Those of us who teach core courses to these students who have come through our rigorous JEE, know how weak the basic concepts of most of them are.

It is felt that the practice of drilling has affected the general attitude of students towards the education process. It is reflected in their performance, in the narrowness of their vision and in their technological career achievements. Gone is the love for learning and the curiosity. Our students wait in the lectures for the bottom line, the formulae they can plug into or the recipe they can follow for the examination problem. Since the brighter amoung the school-going students are interested in preparing for the JEE, the entire school education stands adversely affected. The students now spend lesser and lesser time in exploring what is not directly relevant for JEE. Witness the fate of science laboratories in schools. Now that JEE coaching is beginning at Class IX level, the study of social sciences and languages is similarly affected.

The coaching puts such a load on the student that she/he has no time now for general reading. Reading habits of our students are appalling. Most entrants into IITs have not read a single book in their last three years or so.

The Level of Question Papers

The performance, even statistical, of candidates in the JEE is perhaps the most-well guarded secret in the country, with no information being made available to even those who want to do academic research. However, it is no secret from anybody that the performance level is extremely low. The present level and style of JEE ensures that except for a very small group of exceptional candidates, the bulk of the selection is from such a low-score regime (compared to the marks of a single question on the exam) that `chance factors' become significant determinants of `selection'.

The remedy lies in changing the nature of the question papers. We need question papers that test the candidates on their conceptual understanding, and are pitched at a level not much higher than the level which can reasonably be expected of candidates at school-leaving stage. Any examination will select us the desired number of candidates, but an examination at too high a level leads to the familiar problems of dissatisfaction of very good candidates when they are not able to complete even half of the papers, emphasis on drill learning which leads to wrong study habits we all are familiar with, and to the phenomenon of burn out so often encountered in our students.

It should be emphasized that a good competitive examination paper should be very different from that of a normative or a grading examination. The same is true for the kind of distribution we expect in the two types of examinations. A competitive examination should have a distribution with a very long tail to the right and large standard deviations. Research in examination methodology shows that this can be obtained only when the question paper has (i) a low least count, (ii) all questions are at moderate level of difficulty, and (iii) no tricky or modelling questions which introduce a chance factor in a timed test such as JEE.

It should be clear that we cannot compete with the coaching establishments. They derive their sustenance from the anxiety levels among the parents and are here to stay. And they generally do a good job of what they are required to do: that is, drill the candidates in solving tricky problems. A better question paper is not going to put them out of business. All we can hope is that if we have the right kind of questions, it will motivate them to teach rather than coach.

Uneven Standards

There are other weaknesses as well. As is to be expected, not all the three papers can be of the same standard. This alone results in a glaring distortion as an unacceptably large number of candidates miss out from the merit list because of not meeting the cut-off in only one subject (the one with a low scoring question paper), even when their totals ought to have placed them at quite high ranks. In addition, the vastly different levels of the three papers lead to very different effective weightages of the three subjects. All India Ranks of candidates are found to correlate very highly with the marks in one subject and very little with that in another subject. The marks in this subject essentially serve the function of a go-nogo gate at the cut-off level.

All these shortcomings can be tackled quite effectively with the concept of standardized scores. This is the concept used in most of the large examinations the world over, including some very prestigious ones in India. But somehow it has not been able to attract enough support in our boards, perhaps due to misconceived fears about legal implications.

The Question of Transparency

We must also talk about the complete non-transparency of the JEE operations (except in the allotment of seats). An unsuccessful candidate is not able to determine how far she/he was from the cut-off, or whether she/he should persist with another attempt. It serves no valid purpose and results in too-much trauma to the candidates and too much pressure on the system. It has been suggested in the past that all candidates be issued certificate of their percentile place. There are many arguments that are advanced against it, the main being that it may open up litigation. This I believe is a spurious argument. Another argument is that assigning percentiles to candidates who have scored zeroes or very near it is hardly satisfactory. The present two-tier system has taken care of that objection. The percentile scores may be issued to only the candidates clearing the preliminary examination.

The Looming Threat

We understand from newspaper reports and from urgent missives from teachers' associations of sister institutes that MHRD is twisting the arms of the Institutes to surrender its first-tier examination to a national test to be conducted by an independent testing agency.

It is a sorry fact that the admission through competitive examinations as is being practised in our country is ridiculous. A candidate has to appear in a multitude of examinations, many of them now with two tiers. The idea of a single national examination to reduce the stress on candidates is in itself not a bad idea. However, given the general perception of integrity in most other examinations vis a vis JEE, it seems foolish to trade in JEE for a third party examination.

A Recommendation

It is my considered opinion that the present method of setting the papers by a team of six professors isolated in a room for two weeks cannot give the question papers of the type needed. Serious, well thought out reforms are needed in the way the question papers are set, in the level of the question papers, and the way the answer-scripts are graded and the merit list produced. Such reforms cannot be carried out by the Joint Implementation Committees that have numerous responsibilities to carry out and insufficient time to build consensus for introduction of major changes. Instead, an inter IIT committee should be appointed which should evaluate and suggest the required changes. This has precedence, and many such committees have been appointed in the past. The present 2-tier system is an outcome of the recommendation of such a committee.

Vijay Gupta

Department of Aerospace Engineering

Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur

Kanpur- 208016

E.mail: vg@iitk.ac.in

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