A firestorm of protests erupted within the IITs and their alumni associations worldwide after Union HRD minister Kapil Sibal abolished the rigorous IIT-JEE (joint entrance examination), replacing it with a common entrance exam for all applicants to Central government-funded engineering and technology colleges. Dilip Thakore reports In the end after the faculties of several Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) hoisted banners of revolt against the Union human resource development (HRD) ministry, a compromise was reached on June 27. But once again the academic and administrative autonomy of India’s globally most famous brand was threatened, and it was a close shave. Throughout the month ended June 27, and for the third time in the new millennium, the country’s 16 renowned IITs and especially the seven premier IITs sited in Mumbai, Delhi, Kharagpur, Kanpur, Chennai, Guwahati and Roorkee, hosting over 27,500 of the country’s brightest and best science and engineering students, were in deep turmoil, provoking some of them to declare war against the powerful Union HRD ministry in New Delhi, and minister Kapil Sibal in particular. This time round the casus belli was Sibal’s bolt-out-of-the-blue end May pronouncement abolishing the IIT-JEE (joint entrance examination) conducted annually by IITs, which has earned the reputation of being the world’s most selective undergraduate entrance exam written by over 500,000 Plus Two school-leavers annually. Sibal’s diktat was to replace IIT-JEE with a common entrance exam for all applicants to Central government-funded engineering and technology colleges including 30 NITs (National Institutes of Technology) and four IIITs (Indian Institutes of Information Technology), all of whom provide highly subsidised education to the cream of the country’s science (physics, chemistry and maths) students. On May 28, in a burst of nationalist passion, proclaiming “one nation, one test” after a reported five-hour joint meeting with the councils of IITs, NITs and IIITs attended by directors and chairmen of their boards and eminent member academics, Sibal abolished IIT-JEE stating that after two years of deliberations a consensus had been reached by the councils. Under the new format, the single IIT-JEE was to be split into two exams — JEE Main and JEE Advanced with the former being an MCQ (multiple choice questions) test in PCM (physics, chemistry, mathematics) similar to the AIEEE (All India Engineering Entrance Examination) format, and the latter a concepts testing exam conducted by the IITs. Moreover, to ensure that students pay adequate attention to their higher secondary studies, the class XII mark sheets of 42 school examination boards countrywide converted to normalised percentiles were to be given a 40 percent weightage for admission into IITs. The initial reaction to a common entrance examination for the country’s 64 Central government-funded and most highly ranked and rated engineering and technology colleges offering undergraduate and postgrad education, was resigned silence. However, when the implications of the complex new common entrance exam — particularly the 40 percent weightage given to class XII school-leaving exam scores followed by the main and advanced exams — were carefully examined by the dons of the country’s…
