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IITs and Coaching Mills
By Indra
Aug. 1, 2008 |
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In many of
my write-ups on IIT, I raised the issue of the
damage that the coaching mills sprouted all over
the country, are causing. I was happy to know
that the director and the dean of IIT- Madras
have similar views. As reported in Times of
India on July 31, M S Ananth, the director of
IIT-Madras said, ‘‘I am looking for students
with raw intelligence and not those with a mind
prepared by coaching class tutors. The coaching
classes only help students in mastering
(question paper) pattern-recognizing skills.
With this, you cannot get students with raw
intelligence.’’ Mr. Ananth also expressed his
opinion against the students missing their Class
XII classes to attend coaching.
It was not always like that. I sat for my
entrance examination in 1957 and Rakesh, my
eldest son did that in 1989. There were no
coaching institutes in those days. We appeared
in our Intermediate science or higher secondary
examination, and there after for IIT entrance
examinations. I remember I appeared for ISM,
Dhanbad too. While BE College Shibpur near
Botanical Garden was the center for IIT,
Scottish Church College was for ISM. I don’t
remember if I had seen even any question papers
of the examinations in previous years. By 1989,
Agrawal Classes and Brilliant Tutorial had
started providing correspondence courses for
preparation. I had subscribed for one of them
for Rakesh. None of us could even dream of
taking more chances to get into IIT or ISM.
I personally feel that IITs have failed to
eliminate the ingress of the coaching industry
for the entrance in IITs. In my writings I had
mentioned also of the open book examinations
practiced at IIT that confirms that the setting
of question papers can be done in a manner that
can’t be taught by coaching. I firmly believe
that the directors and faculty members of IITs
must devise innovative means to get the coaching
mills shut, and it is very much possible unless
they themselves have some vested interest. The
curriculum must be one of Class XII standard,
may be of CBSE. It also must discourage multiple
attempts.
Further, I will disagree with Mr. Ananth about
the testing the capability of communication, as
it will give advantage to those coming from
elite private schools. But I shall certainly
like that the prospective engineers must have
aptitude for engineering and creativity and the
entrance examination must test that, as I hate
IITians joining IIM just after graduating. I
shall like to see them as brilliant engineers
who can compete with the best in the world.
It is great that IIT is lifting the veil from
the cut-off controversy. IIT must innovate the
examination in such a manner that the candidates
can take examinations on line and can know about
their scores just after completing the
examination.
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