By: Archana on August 21, 2018
All 23 IITs across the nation has formally ruled out the proposal suggested by the human resource development ministry (HRD) to make amendments in the current examination pattern of Joint Entrance Examination (JEE) Advanced for taking admission in the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT). The decision was taken after the IIT council meeting and getting the support from HRD Minister Prakash Javadekar who is also the chairman of the Council which involves other officials from his ministry along with IIT directors and chairpersons.
The IITs in order to keep its point forwarded an argument that IIT and JEE Advanced in current time is a major brand name and any attempt made to change or dilute the current pattern is not very thoughtful, instead of scraping JEE Advanced focus should be on strengthening and nurturing current examination system to maintain the credibility of JEE Advanced as well as IITs. The council also strike down another suggestion of the ministry, which underlines that the students who will qualify JEE Advanced should be solitarily assigned an institute instead of an engineering branch for the first year.
In the meeting held by IIT Council, the agenda was to discuss the government proposal of setting up a five-member panel and the director of IIT-Madras is appointed as chairman to “develop a robust and scientifically designed entrance exam system to test the potential of the candidates as well as to reduce their dependence on coaching institutes”. Abhay Karandikar, present director- IIT Kanpur, Vineet Joshi, who is director-general of National Testing Agency along with Kannan Moudgalya Prof of IIT-Bombay are supposed to be the other delegates of the panel.
Prakash Javadekar (HRD Minister) addressing the press after the council meeting has said that the meeting is held to provide the solution regarding increasing students' dependency on numbers of coaching institutes for taking JEE Advanced. IITs from now onwards will support the Peer-Assisted Learning (PAL) programme, which includes providing access to record lectures of IIT students and teachers to aid the study plan of students and crack the entrance examination.
One more notable decision taken by the IIT-Council after the meeting is that each IIT from now onwards is free to decide the tuition fee slot of foreign students enrolled in enrolled in M Tech and research programme. However, the power of deciding fee structure is assigned to the Board of Governors of the respective institute. The proposal in the amendment of current fee structure was given after IIT-Delhi asked interference of the government to make changes in fee as the amount of Rs. 6 lacks per annum is a big amount to entice foreign students into taking admission at IITs.
The Council also gave its approval on the proposal to establish one combined platform for recruitment of foreign faculty in all IITs. One IIT will be delegated as the representative medium of the IIT system for a respective country like currently, IIT-Bombay will be responsible for recruitment of faculty from the west coast states in the USA, Russia, and Australia. The IIT will also be responsible for recognizing Indian scholars, who are completing their Ph.D. degree in any foreign Institute and recruit them as assistant professors of IIT.
