NIT admission mess: Inside story revealed by Indian Statistical Institute The inside story behind the mess in the admissions process of the premier institute National Institute of Technology (NIT) has been revealed by Indian Statistical Institute (ISI), Kolkata. The mess relates to the “normalization” of Class XII as well as Joint Entrance Examination-Main (JEE-Main) scores that was used by NIT for their admissions process. As per ISI, the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) and Human Resource Development (HRD) ministry are responsible for devising the final normalization formula, whereas the suggestions made by the SK Joshi Committee as well as the ISI were not taken into account. ISI is an important member of the S K Joshi Committee, which is a national advisory committee in India. During a meeting of this committee held in September, 2012, ISI had claimed that personnel from Indian Centre for Assessment Evaluation and Research (ICAER) had been employed by CBSE to work out the modalities of formulation of normalization of Board scores. As per the ICAER report, since the merit of students differed in the various boards, Results of students from different Boards in JEE-Main should be utilized to adjust the Board scores differentially. As per ISI, the ICAER recommendation was offering undue advantage to a student under CBSE Board, that too at the expense of a student under a non-CBSE Board who has scored identical percentile. A core committee was constituted by CBSE to garner support for the “differential normalization” model, ISI claimed. To build the case for differential normalization, supporting data analysis was acquired from The Indian Institute of Technology-Kanpur (IIT-Kanpur) faculty as well as from Glenn Rowley of the Australian Council for Educational Research (ACER), ISI officials added. As per ISI, ICAER officials had discussed the advantages of using scores from JEE-Main to track the scores or percentiles of the Boards, during an S K Joshi Committee meeting held in October, 2012. Thereafter, the Joshi panel decided to involve CBSE’s core committee for all its successive meetings. During a meeting held in October, 2012, there was a conflict of opinion between the core committee and the CBSE. During a meeting held in December 2012, ISI officials had pointed out through analysis that CBSE’s “tracking” method is full of flaws and might result in percentiles of different Boards getting distorted in a major way. There was widespread approval for the uncomplicated percentile-based method recommended by the Joshi Committee and the report was tabled in March, 2013, ISI officials added. As per ISI, a meeting was held during April, 2013 which included members from the NIT Council. During that meeting, CBSE officials provided new information supporting the differential normalization method. Thereafter, more members were inducted into the Joshi Committee to whom the issue was presented for review. The report from the Joshi Panel found support in members from the expanded committee. As per ISI, during a further meeting held in April, 2013 at the office of an official of technical education, a completely new recommendation was circulated by All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) officials. There were further disagreements between officials from the different bodies. On Monday, May 6, 2013, a new formula was devised by the JEE Interface Group which is a combination of the recommendations from CBSE officials as well as members of the Joshi Committee, about which ISI was kept in the dark at that moment, ISI officials added.
Posted on: Sat, 03 Aug 2013 02:14:29 +0000
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