The Hindu Business Line : Ending the testing times for students

It is the `Entrance Test time' of the year, with numerous examinations for various under-graduate courses. The right course would be to get out of all public examinations and go the US way, with one test like the SAT. Or, take the completely conservative route and have a tie-up with Cambridge to let every 12th grader take the GCE (A) exam and get accepted by universities across the globe. The present muddled middle path is of little long-term benefit to the student community, says Bhanoji Rao .

Should students be put through the ordeal of various examinations?

IN THE 1950s and part of the 1960s, the intermediate examination by a state authority was good enough to join any national or regional institution or university. Life was simple. With mathematics, physics and chemistry, the inter first class student could access degree programmes in engineering, technology and sciences. Going for a medical degree required that the student had biology, physics and chemistry. With Arts subjects in Inter, one had to go for arts or social sciences at the degree level. An inter in commerce was a must for taking the B. Com programme.

Life now is much more complicated. Entrance tests, admission tests and qualifying tests galore: That is the education scene today. For admission to first degree programmes in agriculture, engineering, law, management, medicine, pharmacy and so on, there are entrance tests conducted at the State and the national level. Once the degree is completed, there are entrance tests again for post-graduate programmes. Just for MBA alone, there are as many as 35 different entrance tests, three conducted by national agencies and 32 by others.

Over the past three decades, more so in the last 15years , private institutions have sprung up by the dozenin every district with the objective of preparing students to take the diverse entrance tests. Some of the more committed and reputed institutions conduct their own entrance tests to select students.

Thus, we have entrance tests to prepare for entrance tests. Obviously, institutions are keen on safeguarding their brand name and prestige. They are corporate in their mindset and advertise freely in the print and electronic media to publicise how good they are in ensuring success in such and such entrance test.

Large billboards are not uncommon and some have celebrities on them directly or indirectly spreading the message. The only ad-strategy not yet embarked on by them is to have film stars endorsing their courses or vouching for the quality of the institution.

Practically every State has a CET or Common Entrance Test for admission to professional degree programmes. In Andhra Pradesh, the sought after test by most 12th graders is EAMCET, short for Engineering, Agriculture, and Medicine Common Entrance Test. It evolved out of a 1983 Act of the State Government, which framed the rules for admission into undergraduate professional programmes. After the establishment of the AP State Council for Higher Education (APSCHE) in 1988, the Council has been assigned the overall responsibility for the smooth conduct of EAMCET.

The Council also took care to obtain, from time to time, feedback from parents, students and academia and initiate steps to make needed changes in the EAMCET testing process.

In September 2004, APSCHE constituted a High Power Committee (HPC) to study the entire EAMCET process, based on detailed feedback from students, parents and teachers and make recommendations, especially on its continuation and reforms and improvements in the process. The HPC submitted its report in March and the document is in the public domain. The Committee and its report are indeed timely given the demand growth and the anxiety each exam causes among students and parents.

The demand for EAMCET is indicated, for instance, by the doubling of the number appearing for engineering stream of the test, from around 54,000 in 1994 to a little over 1,09,000 in 2004 (all data are from the HPC Report). Yet, one must be concerned with the violent fluctuation in the pass rate in the early and mid-1990s. It was less than 50 per cent during 1994-97, shot up to 82 per cent in 1998, 92 per cent in 1999, stayed between 84 per cent and 94 per cent during 2000-02, dropped to 69 per cent in 2003 and rose to 82 per cent in 2004. Ignoring the results of 1994-97, it is safe to say that the pass rate of 80-90 per cent is as close as `all those appearing'. Is it because of the veracity of the Inter Public Exam (IPE)? Is it proof of the value addition by the institutions that prepare for EAMCET? Or is it a necessity because of the mushrooming of engineering colleges? Each of these may be a valid explanation. On the last point, it is necessary to note that the number of colleges has gone up from 26 in 1995 to 239 in 2004, with seats expanding from 9000 to 80,000. In the early 1990s, students could not find places; now places could not find students.

The HPC conducted a number of workshops to elicit the opinions, discuss issues and obtain written feedback. Here is one important finding, based on all the responses put together: "The credibility of EAMCET... was rated as excellent by 69 per cent and good by 17 per cent... Intermediate was considered as excellent by 23 per cent and good by 39 per cent... IPE was rated as poor by 29 per cent and EAMCET by 7 per cent. At the time of oral presentations, a majority preferred EAMCET. They said they would prefer IPE if its credibility is high." On the quality of evaluation, EAMCET received `excellent' from 70 per cent, while IPE got only 19 per cent. On the duration of valuation and announcement of results, `excellent' was given by 69 per cent for EAMCET and 20 per cent for IPE.

All the numbers point to one simple conclusion: EAMCET is here to stay. Despite this obvious point, which the HPC would have anticipated given the vast constituency for EAMCET including the educational enterprises, the Committee has done yeomen service in making a sensible recommendation. It is to give right away some weight to the Inter results in the subjects concerned and the balance weight to the EAMCET result, "and in course of time may be in the next five years the marks of (Inter) exam could be considered as sole criterion for admission into all professional courses."

Americans have no `public' examinations at any grade and not even at the end of the 12th. They all take the Scholastic Aptitude Test or SAT any time in the 11th or 12th grade. It is a test respected across the colleges and universities in the country and used for admissions to degree programmes. Some who wish to join prestigious universities in Europe would generally go for the IB examination.

Call it EAMCET or IPE. If Andhra Pradesh can succeed in mounting just one and only one exam as the sole qualifying test for degree programmes, a small and bold step would have been taken. More has to be done. We need to change our mindset in regard to learning. We must get out of all public examinations and go the US way, with one exam like the SAT.

Alternatively let us take the completely conservative route and have a tie up with Cambridge to let each and every 12th grader take the GCE (A) exam and get accepted by the universities across the globe.The muddled middle path, which we now have, is of little long-term benefit to the student community.

(The author, formerly with the National University of Singapore and the World Bank, is Professor Emeritus, GITAM Institute of Foreign Trade, Visakhapatnam. He can be reached at bhanoji@gmail.com)

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