Musings of Dheeraj Sanghi: JEE 2013: Why I feel cheated

 This is being reblogged from one of my IIT Kanpur Professors' blog.

We all feel cheated. We had a meeting with the Minister in April. He asked all the seven Senates (of the older IITs) to give suggestions on JEE 2013 and beyond. He suggested a methodology for incorporating their views into the final decision. He said that once all the Senates have given their views, there will be an IIT Council meeting which will come up with a proposal that is based on the feedback given by the seven Senates. This proposal was to be shared with all IITs. This was to be discussed in a second meeting of IIT Council. For this second meeting, each Senate was to nominate 2 persons each who would be invited to this IIT Council meeting. In addition two persons from All India IIT Faculty Federation were to be invited as well. The second IIT Council meeting was to discuss the proposal in presence of these 16 faculty members, and differences were to be ironed out with the help of these 16 faculty members.

What really happened is a very different story. The first meeting came up with a mechanism which most Senates had opposed to. In particular, most of the Senates felt that IITs should continue with their current process of JEE for 2013 and the new process should be adopted only from 2014. This was not only fair to students who have given 12th class already, or have already spent a lot of time in preparing for the JEE 2013, but this was also felt necessary to test various assumptions that the new system makes, and many of those assumptions are simply ridiculous (like every board being equal) and contrary to the data that we have. Even this request was denied. Informally, several Directors have told me that 2014 being the election year, no major changes can be done in that year. Now, are we going to adopt an admission process with so many questions about it, based on political expediency.

There was no invitation to Senates to send two representatives to the next meeting.

I am sure a lot of persons pushing their agenda are congratulating themselves on their smart moves and strategies, and they would have stories to tell their grand children, how they made fool of more than 1000 IIT faculty members. I have only this to say to them: It is possible to win by cheating. That is what you have proven. A system created by cheating, cannot but allow cheating. Come 2013 admission time, a lot of hard working, intelligent, honest students of this country will find out, it is possible to win by cheating.

Reblogged via : Musings of Dheeraj Sanghi: JEE 2013: Why I feel cheated: