Prof. M.K. Bhat
Getting a college /course of one’s own liking is not short of a miracle for innumerable students and their parents nowadays. The only way to achieve this milestone is through good marks and high rank in the competition. This zeal for a good college/course leads to sleepless nights for some, adoption of fraudulent practices for others and a berserk business for still others. The sincere students in order to attain good marks lose their sleep and mental rest. It impairs their health and kills their creativity and at times makes them to take extreme step when dejected. They are made to feel that admission in a good college is the way to Nirvana. The fraudulent ones adopt illicit methods, recently four first position holders in Bihar Board of school education came out to be farce .The certificate scams, cheating/copying and other methods of attaining good marks too is not uncommon in this country. The coaching shops make a good business in this murky system without even assuring about the success of the candidate. This is a low risk high return bearing business. These shops are everywhere in the country and have sprung as a necessary evil. All the three positions in the JEE advanced this year sprang from one such institute. It is a hard fact that an aspiring student cannot do well in the exams without such institutes. The lack of attention towards the regular students was earlier common in Government schools only but now it is a feature of private Schools too. The system encourages students for coaching institutions. Those who afford, pay a hefty sum to tuition centers to see their wards at the desired institution and those who cannot learn the art of filling forms for nothing. Kota (Rajasthan) has come up as a manufacturing hub for those parroting the art of getting good rank in the competitive examination. The coaching institutions reap good harvest from their brands through the big advertisements they make in news dailies. The situation is so pathetic that despite thousands in the coaching centers of the country, the pass percentage for PMT stands at a low of 0.6 percent.
The cut off in various colleges is touching sky primarily because attaining 90 % marks is turning nowadays an easy cake for everyone to cherish. There are more than 90,000 students with more than 90 percent marks at CBSE plus two level and more than one lakh 20 thousand students at tenth level examination with a grade of 10 CGPA. This makes one to doubt whether India is getting more intelligent or it is the carelessness of evaluators, paper setters or the outcome of a faulty system. It may be proper to mention here that the repetition of questions and yes or no answers have made things quite shallow and the student feels little importance of reading things in detail – simple refreshers helps them to get the things done.
Besides marks, the other devastating requirement for getting in a college is competition and the rank one attains in it. This competition is generally held among unequals because of different teaching pedagogies, backgrounds, syllabus, mediums, parental education and school infrastructure etc. The same facilities are not availed by all the students, so the uniform test looks like a misnomer. It in other words leads to the promotion of the creamy layer by throwing peanuts to the less privileged people of the society.
This tussle for marks/rank is primarily due to the mismatch between the demand for and supply of the higher institutions of learning. It is no doubt that the institutions of higher learning have grown manifold in recent years, but the irony has been that the standard of the institutions have skydived to its lowest ebb. The public sector institutions under perform for the lack of accountability, syllabus is hardly tuned to the requirements of the society, practical orientation is a miss and the research has got replaced by duplicity. Private sector on the other hand is entering only in the chosen areas where low investment and high returns can be reaped. The Government plan to establish a few new institutions is no solution to the problem but there is an intense need to upgrade the existing institutions. This may not only lead to social equality but will also go a long way in lessening the pressure on the existing good institutions of the country. The education regulatory authorities need to be practical rather than policing the right person.
It may not be out of way to mention that the buzz about admissions is primarily because students have nothing fruitful to do so, the only option with them remains to attend colleges /Universities for a sizeable period of time. The outcome after three years of graduation, if analyzed properly, will only make the incumbent to repent for his deed. The industry says that they are not useable, they fail to adjust in their traditional occupation, confidence or intelligence is not much improved, certain even fail to write an application on their own and compulsion for placement makes them to go for post graduation and pushes them again in the vicious circle of marks and rank etc. The end to all this happens with the compilation of a big bundle of certificates of no practical use.
(The author is Director(M.A.I.M.S) Guru Gobind Singh Indraprastha University New Delhi.)
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