COMMON ENTRANCE TEST FOR ENGINEERING

The government will scrap all
engineering entrance exams
from 2013-14. It has also come
up with a novel idea of hiking
tuition fees: students will not feel
the pinch during the course of
study, but they will have to pay
up once they get a job.
Currently, various state boards
and institutions, including the
IITs, conduct at least 150
entrance exams every year. The
government decided to dump all
such exams, including the IIT-JEE
and the AIEEE, at a meeting of IIT
Council (IIT directors) and
officials from the ministry of
human resource development
(HRD). Union HRD minister Kapil
Sibal chaired the meeting.
“There will be one merit list.
Institutes, including the IITs, will
have to pick up students from
this list,” Sibal said. “The list will
be based on Std 12 marks and
the entrance test results. Also,
students will be counselled
before they choose a course.”
This test will be similar to the
common entrance exam for
medical courses beginning next
year.
While rejecting the report of the
Anil Kakodkar Committee that
had suggested a five-fold fee
hike for IITs (BTech and MTech
programmes), the government,
in principle, approved a fee hike.
Sibal said students would
continue paying Rs50,000 as
annual fee, but they would have
to “pay back” the difference
money — the fee paid by a
student and the money spent on
him by an IIT — once they get a
job.
Those from the SC/ST and OBC
categories and students going
for higher education or joining
an IIT faculty would be exempted
from this policy. The exemption
would encourage students to
take up research work and meet
the faculty shortage, Sibal said.
l Turn to p13
“At present, the fees are nominal
because of government subsidy,”
he said. “The actual cost works
out to nearly Rs6-8 lakh per
student. Students can surely pay
back this amount in easy
instalments, considering the
plush jobs they land with once
they get their degrees.”
But the government wants a
foolproof system in place to
ensure students pay back the
difference money. The degrees,
which will soon be in a DMAT
format, will reflect the difference
money as loan and employers
will be asked to deduct it from a
student’s salary and deposit it
with the government.
The government knows that
several states might oppose its
plan of a common entrance test
for engineering courses because
a large chunk of engineering
colleges comes under state
purview.
But it is confident of having the
support of state governments
because of the Supreme Court
order in favour of a common
entrance exam for medical
courses. Sibal said that the Centre
would discuss the matter with all
state education ministers and
representatives of all state
boards.
Source:DNA