WITH OFFICIALDOM DECIDING ON A YEAR’S BREAK FROM THE PRACTICE, STUDENTS, IT SEEMS, WILL HAVE MORE HURDLES TO CLEAR THAn JUST BOARD EXAMS, SAYS DEBAMEETA BHATTACHARYA

WITH the year fast closing in on its second month, there is a hullabaloo in the education sector and engineering aspirants will have to prepare to face the music. On 5 February, officials of the Union ministry of human resource&’s Department of Higher Education and university representatives decided to do away with common counselling for National Institute of Technology and Indian Institute of Technology aspirants for this year. The decision is also applicable to other Centrally funded institutes — even though their representatives were not present in the meeting – and is in contrast to the views expressed earlier by Ashok Thakur, secretary of the ministry department, who had said common counselling was in students’ interest. In what amounts to a little “give”, officials said common counselling may return from next year.
So why is 2014 an exceptional case? Sometime in April last year, Thakur had proposed common counselling to eliminate the possibility of seats going vacant in premier institutes like the IITs and also other state engineering colleges. This because some students who qualified in the Joint Entrance Examination Main as well as JEE Advanced would take admissions in both IITs and NITs, deciding at the last minute on what course they would attend. Vacancies would emerge only after the session would begin, thereby making new admissions practically impossible.
With the IIT admission process starting earlier, candidates joined courses even though these may not involve the desired specialisation simply because they were reluctant to let go of a confirmed seat. Only in the event of getting a course they wanted at one of the NITs would they give up their IIT seats, by which time it was too late to offer these to others on the qualifying list.
Last year, 600 places were unfilled, twice the number of 2012. “Often candidates pay admission fees for allotted seats in an IIT and NIT and then decide where they want to join. Very often they don’t cancel their admissions till the last minute, resulting in vacancies that become clear only after the session starts,” a ministry official said. “As a result, many candidates with lower JEE ranks do not get the opportunity for admission.”
Common counselling means a student will receive only one offer from the IITs and NITs. A second option will be given only if the candidate rejects the first offer. “A student will receive an offer from only one institute, either an IIT or an NIT, at a time,” Thakur had said.
IIT representatives at the meeting said that admissions for the two sets of schools being about a month apart made it difficult to coordinate the process when the joint counselling system was suggested last year. For the record, the IITs have opposed efforts to put in place common processes, be these related to entrance examinations or counselling. “In a sense, the IITs feel that any such effort would weaken their brand and undermine their image as the country&’s premier engineering institutions,” said an administrator of an engineering college.
The ministry has, however, again asked the 16 IITs and 30 NITs to jointly guide students on course choices to avoid confusion. That said, it seems students have a bigger hurdle to clear than just board exams, given the reforms for reforms’ sake being implemented.