The Only Fair Entrance Examination

                                                        The Only Fair Entrance Examination

A few days ago I was reading an opinion piece in a newspaper about “Detoxifying” the Indian entrance examination system. What is the result of ingesting the system as is? The writers are immediately forthcoming: intense competition (dog-eat-dog, my understanding). Students, as a result, suffer from stressed life, depression and alienation. I found the article well argued; yet, some of the solutions offered are not without negatives. I will get to them later.

If students suffer from alienation, the writers do not specify from what. Bring in the undefined, formulaic and almost meaningless term, holistic development of students. In my opinion, people develop holistic perspectives only as they mature and spend time on looking at society; definitely not in their student days (there could be exceptions, though). The lack of even a wide-angle view by students was mentioned in the newspaper article as an unintended and unidentified sacrifice by students and their parents

The “intense competition” is a ratchet wheel. How does the wheel work? Every year and year-on-year, students have to be tested more and more severely and on more and more difficult questions that they would hardly ever meet in their UG syllabi. I agree with the writers.

I wrote the IIT Joint Entrance Examination (when it must not have gained the acronym, IIT JEE) and I remembered a few questions, wholly conceptual (in geometry and physics), and reasonably simple for me, who was about to pass, not with any high marks/grades, the Madras University Pre-University Course. So, readers, when I joined IIT, I was bottom crawling! I sought and got asylum in Civil Engineering.

During my teaching the first year course on mechanics at a private university I threw in a few of these questions and the students, who failed to get into any of the IITs, could not answer.Then, why demand higher standards? This is why the writers bemoan students trying to solve, “complex problems from …Irodov (?) and Krotov (?), which go far beyond B.Tech requirements.” I am with the writers on this.

Next comes reification to the second/third decimal place. I have heard that parents are not beyond asking, “Where did you lose that 0.05? The cut-off mark was 97.73 and you got 97.68. You lost the opportunity for a good college education. Go hide your face in the garbage dump outside.”   

The above is nothing but mistaking precision for accuracy. In assessing suitability to learn, both these are irrelevant. It can be truthfully measured only through, let me say it, holistic assessment. The writers mention this; I wish they had given a lot more stress to the issue, as it has to reach the parents. They need to be detoxified, or their brains dewormed! Yet, I am thankful.

What do coaching institutes do to be successful? First, they favour city students (more resourceful?) over town students and much more so over down-market places, such as villages. Then, life is like that in an army, such strict regimens. The enemy is sitting just in the next bench in the class! 

A shadow of caste must be falling on this issue. But, the writers have not gone there and so I too would not. I know a student who spent two years in Kota, the Indian capital of IIT JEE coaching institutes, got into an IIT, doing, you would not guess, Civil Engineering, that most loathed discipline among the aspirants. Intensive coaching such as I have discussed create “illusory meritocracy”. The writers hit the nail on the head and hard!

Yet, that fellow went to the US, to University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (one of the top universities in the world in Civil Engineering), and finished his doctorate in the much-in-demand transportation engineering and is enjoying life. He sure must have worked very hard. How did that happen? His father knew how to do things, like making his son miss regular growing-up. The son lapped up the opportunity, and skipped normal growing up. I am not blaming anyone. The system of entrance exams reaches deep into the psyche of the aspirants, and more importantly, their parents.

The obsession with the perceived individual superiority through IIT JEE and other such examinations leads to obfuscating lives of the aspiring candidates at home, monetary capabilities, luck, and the in-built biases of society.  This is not something a rational human would approve. 

Now, to a brief discussion on where the writers had gone wrong. The first example they offer for emulation is The Netherlands. Yes, ratio of the area of India to The Netherlands is about 78, and the ratio between the populations of the two countries is about 81. These ratios are comparable, so, OK. Or, are they?

Mathematically OK, but mathematical ratios should not be the metric in comparisons relating to education. Look at their per capita incomes. The Netherlands beats India by a whopping factor of 29! Does the comparison look OK? NO! The writers tried to pull the wool over eyes of their readers, but failed with me. 

The Netherlands uses a weighted lottery system for medical school admissions. What I understand is if your body weight is high, your odds for success in the lottery are high.

Just kidding. Do the writers think that such lotteries could not be corrupted, when corruption has been woven into the fabric of Indian society? Don’t answer that. Even Gods are corrupt/corruptible in India

Next up in the comparison with China. Adopt its methods that could help check “excessive and disorderly growth of coaching centres and their impact on youth”. To my mind, we already have rules and regulations regarding many things in our lives including education, but they are followed more in the breach. Compared to China, The Netherlands looks doable!

The writers state that if authorities trusted the school system, everything would be hunky dory. Dream on.

They advocate 50% of IIT seats to rural students from government schools. Please, someone, pinch me hard to wake up from an afternoon reverie. This suggestion dovetails nicely when the government is getting out of social governance in a hurry!

Well, whereas the diagnosis was good, the prescription would kill the patients.

There can never be a holistic solution in a nation that boasts of Gini coefficient hovering around 61-62 (World Inequality Database, 2023). It was found that based on income, the top 1% of the adult Indian population holds over 40% of the total national wealth.

To be fair, if the metric is Consumption expenditure, the coefficient is 25.5. As a casual observer of society, this number is hard to digest for me. The point is, the richer one is, more would be their savings and further investments (for profits), abroad. That is, the rich are likely to find opportunities for splurging flatten out in India; explains the low coefficient. Tell me, isn’t this why Elon Musk is spending on Mars instead of on the earth?

Coming to education, it is a public good and cannot be tied down to how rich one’s parents are. The threshold level of quality education is a right of every child. If government schools are not providing the required quality, the corrective measures have to be taken there. This applies to rural schools and education also.

Any entrance examination can be only as fair as students and their parents want it to be.

Raghuram Ekambaram