The Air of Ambiguity-IIT Professors Criticize the Current Admission Process in IITs

There is an air of ambiguity among IIT professors over IIT admission process ahead of JEE results. IIT faculty claims that the introduction of the new system will only add to the woes of students. According to the members, the new system will force students to undergo coaching from as early as class 6.

“It is ideal to get raw talent from any part of the country, rather than urban students who go through the grueling coaching process to eliminate answers,” T. S. Natarajan, organizing chairman for JEE 2010 who has been an IIT faculty for around 40 years, was quoted as saying.

“It is my opinion that a subjective paper is the right way to test students. With an objective paper you don’t know if the student has chosen the right answer by fluke or by reasoning. To see how a student’s mind works you must know how he arrives at the answer,” he added.

However, members who were not in favor of the system earlier have now given a green signal to the system due to the large number of system.

“It’s a compromise. Faculty members would love to have a subjective paper, but that could also mean subjective evaluation. And, in a world of RTI activism we cannot have that,” S. K. Das, IIT-Madras academic research dean, was quoted as saing.

“One of the reason I have accepted the current system is that even faculty who are willing to evaluate subjective papers may not be willing to take the risk in today’s world where a mistake would become big news. It will be trending on social media if one mistake is made,” she added.
“Regardless of whether the test is objective or subjective,the toppers will be the same.But,the selection process need not stop with just a test. It could involve other facets of a student’s life, like what kind of social work the student has been involved in, or other curricular and co-curricular activities,” V. G. Idichandy, professor emeritus at IIT-Madras who as dean of students spoke out against the quality of students that the coaching system was pushing into the IITs in 2008.
This post was published by Aditya Singhal, co-founder of askIITians.