PROPOSAL OF SINGLE ENTRANCE TEST FOR ENGINEERING COLLEGE

COURTESY: The Telegraph

The government is considering a proposal to have all the deemed universities and engineering colleges admit their students through the Joint Entrance Examination Main and common counselling.

Such single-window admission, the human resource development ministry believes, will help ensure standards across colleges and curb the racket of capitation fee-driven teaching shops.

Admission to medical and dental courses is already governed by a common exam. The Supreme Court recently ruled that all medical and dental colleges and deemed universities must admit students through the National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test, allowing certain exemptions only for this year.

"We are looking at a proposal to have all the engineering institutions admit students through the JEE Main," a senior ministry official said.

Sources said the University Grants Commission, the higher education regulator, might be asked to pass such a regulation.

The Central Board of Secondary Education conducts the JEE Main, which now regulates admission to the National Institutes of Technology, the Indian Institutes of Information Technology and state-level engineering colleges in places such as Haryana and Gujarat.

The JEE Main also functions as a screening test for the JEE Advanced, which governs admissions to the Indian Institutes of Technology.

Currently, JEE Main-based admission to national-level institutes is done through a national-level process of common counselling. If and when all the institutions start admitting students through the JEE Main, separate state-level common counselling processes will have to be held.

Sources said that if a state does not want to conduct common counselling for its engineering colleges, these institutions might be allowed their individual counselling processes - but they must be a transparent online exercise.

Common counselling is key to checking the illegal practice, adopted by some institutions, of allowing candidates to leapfrog rivals higher on the merit list by paying hefty capitation fees. In case of common counselling, done online, institutes cannot breach the merit list.

More than 100 entrance tests are now held - at the state and institution levels - for admission to the country's 4,000 engineering colleges, forcing candidates to travel to multiple centres. A single entrance test and common counselling will bring relief to lakhs of aspiring engineers.

Most of India's 123 deemed universities now admit students through their own entrance tests and counselling processes. There are instances of candidates getting impersonators to take the test on their behalf to secure higher scores.

In 2012, the human resource development ministry had unsuccessfully tried to persuade all engineering colleges to admit students through the JEE Main. This time it's thinking of making the directive mandatory.

PANEL RECOMMENDS SINGLE ENGINEERING TEST

A government-appointed panel has recommended a single entrance test for admissions to all engineering institutes under AICTE and a common examination for all business schools. 

Significantly, it has suggested that seats which fall vacant after the completion of counselling sessions "shall not be treated as a management quota", but be used to accommodate students on the waiting list. 

The panel has recommended setting up of a National Testing Service for conduct of the exam and proposed that it be an independent body seeking the support of CBSE or outsourcing the work to other agencies.

At present over 11,000 institutes, both engineering and management, come under the purview of All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE). 

"There shall be a single National Testing Service which shall conduct a Joint Entrance Examination for engineering courses and a Common Admission Test for management courses, the results whereof shall be used by all institutions, whether run by universities, deemed universities, state government-run universities, private universities etc. 

"The seats which fall vacant after the completion of counselling sessions shall not be treated as a management quota, but shall be used to accommodate students on the waiting lists of these examinations," the report of the AICTE review committee said. 

The recommendations have been posted on the website mygov.in to seek the views of stakeholders.

"Today a student takes a plethora of entrance tests for entry to an institution under AICTE - and these are over and above the board exam. For example, JEE Main for engineering, CMAT for management, etc. Moreover, most states have some form of an entrance test. Besides, several deemed universities and private universities have their own tests and criteria for admission. 

"Therefore, it is proposed that a national testing agency be established under AICTE. It will endeavour to have a single national entrance test for all institutions under it," the report said. 

In its report, the committee has also suggested that AICTE should be transformed into an "apex constitutional authority" and emphasized on doing away with the affiliation system within a decade. 

"It should be converted into an apex constitutional authority to promote orderly, integrated and coordinated development of technical education ... technical education should be a fundamental right," the report said. 

The recommendations come two years after the HRD ministry then headed by Kapil Sibal had proposed to have a similar national testing agency to conduct various kinds of national level entrance examinations. A task force was also constituted to take the proposal forward, but little was heard about the it since then. 

Recognising the need for restructuring and strengthening the AICTE to address the challenges, the Human Resource Development Ministry had set up a review committee led by former education secretary MK Kaw in November 2014.

SOURCE: TOI