Gyanayan

Single Medical Entrance- better late than never

2011-03-10T07:23:00.000-08:00

The Supreme Court directive on pan-India single medical test for medicine courses could not have come at a better time. Though the directive is not exactly national in spirit as it excludes Tamil Nadu, it does serve as a great breather to millions of students who would be writing their medical entrance examinations in the years to come.
Medical courses, both UG and PG levels have the most complicated admission procedure in this country. Each state has its own common admission test known in different names like CET, JEE and so on. Some states have different admission tests for private and government colleges and different regional quota systems prevail in the name of providing more opportunity to local candidates. An estimated 30,000 seats are available each year for MBBS programs but there exist more than a dozen entrance tests. Each “prestigious” institute like CMC Vellore or AFMC Pune has its own test- sometimes candidates competing from all over India are left with less than 10 seats in the Open category for such colleges. Think of the plight of candidates who need to go through the logistical hassle of taking so many tests. I remember about 15 yrs back a friend of mine had taken 6 medical entrances in span of 2 months, virtually taking a test every alternate Sunday. All the time of his was spent in making travel arrangements to the test center rather than working on the last minute preparations. The scenario has not changed much even today.
A single entrance test makes sense for many reasons. Convenience to candidates is the major one, at the same time it helps spot the right talent from across the country through a single window. A lot of candidates who otherwise might not have written the test would do so now as opportunity mixed with compulsion is at doorstep. This in the long run will help increase the quality of talent in our medical colleges and resultantly will improve the quality of teaching also as we need better faculty to teach better students. On the other hand it’s easier to outsource the entire activity to a professional test conducting agency that have the expertise of handling tests of such scale. MCI should concentrate on quality of test items and correctness of evaluation procedure and let the agency handle all other aspects of managing the test. That is likely to ensure a fairer deal to candidates.
The key challenge however would be to integrate different syllabus of physics, chemistry and biology followed in different states. To give a simple example, candidates in West Bengal State Board learnt for a long time that to denote the force generated through a certain body in accelerating motion they need to write the equation is p=mf. Whereas candidates who did follow CBSE syllabus had a much simpler and logical way of writing it as F=MA, denoting the first letter of each word force, mass and acceleration. There are many more such tricks and candidates following vernacular medium in state boards will be the ones to suffer most. This might eliminate some good talent who despite having considerable domain knowledge would hit the language barrier. The authorities need to be careful about this especially for MBBS level.
Since the SC directive has come in quite late for this academic session, in all practical purposes the single entrance test will take shape in next academic year. Meanwhile we are going to see a lot of appeals, objections and other legal and not so legal methods by vested interests to stop this initiative. With politicians controlling 4 out of every 5 private medical colleges in this country, bringing in something good for everyone is a great challenge. Let’s have faith in the judiciary and wisdom of authorities.

Imbalanced Scorecard

2010-05-06T01:32:00.000-07:00

Final selection lists of the IIMs are out. Like last few years engineers dominate the scene- as expected. But a little red flag sprung up in the most prestigious campus of the country- IIM Ahmedabad. Final batch composition of the institute is 95% engineers, and among the crowd of 5% there is only one candidate with a humanities background.

There begins the concern. A diversified participant background is one of the core conditions in management programs. International schools make it a point to maintain diversity; one often finds people from fields like medicine, psychology and ex-servicemen in the class. Varieties of this nature ensure different perspectives in classroom learning as well as help build stronger knowledge base for all participants. Engineering graduates have high analytical and numerical skills, but that’s not the only skills required in management education. Often these skills have a low correlation with leadership qualities, and ultimately the purpose of great management institutes is to create leaders. Compromising class diversity therefore could have immense long term effect.

Its not that the admission committee at IIM-A does not know the importance of diversity in class profile, but it could hardly help its own cause. Over the last few years IIMs have turned into glorified placement agencies for foreign investment banks. Media headlines are dominated by stories of fabulous packages offered to IIM graduates - though more often than not media miss out the real story behind those cooked up numbers. When was the last time we saw a meaningful research coming out of IIMs? In their history of more than forty years, how many case studies have we seen IIMs contributing? Management education in India is still dominated by books by foreign authors- a lot of them have little relevance to Indian socio-economic structure.

To cater to their main recruiters, IIMs have taken a not-so-scientific approach in the selection procedure. Common Admission Test or CAT, the first step to the prestigious institutions, is heavily biased towards engineering students. Unlike GMAT where verbal and quantitative skills get equitable weight-age, CAT is a quantitative skill dominated test. In GMAT a candidate requires to write a couple of essays that assess his/her clarity in thinking and application of language skills. Scores of these essays are taken as a reference point for the application essays that candidates submit to admission committee of respective b-schools. IIMs on the contrary have no such provisions- the essay that students need to write at IIM A (only IIM to have done that) has ignorable importance in the final selection process. Another big fault lies in the calculation of academic record- considering the absolute score of qualifying exams. An engineering graduate, by the virtue of marking system has a higher probability of scoring good marks than a humanities or commerce graduate. The picture is true across all universities in India.

This year the test conducting agency and IIMs had created a lot of hype about bringing in a balanced approach in selection process. That seems to have remained on paper at best. Unless there is a fundamental change in approach, IIMs may soon see 99% of the seats being occupied by engineers.

Well, a tilted boat has a greater risk in turbulent seas and with the best foreign universities waiting to set up campuses in India- the sea will become more turbulent soon.

Deemed to be messy

2010-01-19T22:06:00.000-08:00

The morning newspaper surprised us with the news of 44 deemed universities being de-recognized by the central govt. Well, we should have been surprised to know the number is as less as 44. Most of the deemed universities have little or no infrastructure and absolutely zero management. They run like family shops- discarding respect for any process starting from recruitment of faculty to admission of students. These are virtually degree selling shops catering to incompetent children of affluent parents.
A closer look tells us most of such universities are set up either in northern or southern part of the country, regions that are famous for capitation fee driven admission system. There is no professional approach to curriculum design, and whatever is published as curriculum not even 25% of that is adhered to. While admitting students, admission tests are conducted to bluff the authorities. It's like having a great hole in sieve to allow both the grain and chuff and none is bothered about the input. With an average course fee of Rs.60,000/- per semester for undergraduate and Rs.120,000/- for postgraduate these universities make a host of money. One such private university has a student base of 4000 for UG and 3000 for PG. And it's just one we are talking about, there are many more who are running 5 times over their sanctioned capacity.

Private participation in higher education is essential for the growth of the economy. Govt. alone can't and shouldn't bear the burden. In India ownership of private education has remain limited to influential politicians who aims to invest their huge corpus of unaccounted money through this channel. This provides them an additional channel of extracting money from people. In the end the quality of educational output suffers to a great extent. These institutions have no accountability towards anyone- be it parents, students or teaching faculty in particular or society in general. It leads to a ultimate anarchy.

This is where our govt. needs to step in. Kapil Sibal has initiated the right process, lets see how far the progress is. Reliance coming into university education is one baby step, a proper corporatisation of higher education sector will be the final destination.

Keeping that topic reserved for my next blog.

Indian Education Service

2009-12-29T07:47:00.000-08:00

Last Saturday (26-Dec), a PTI report revealed that the government is planning to introduce an Indian Education Service (IES); much in the line of Indian Administrative Service (IAS) or Indian Revenue Service (IRS). HRD minister Kapil Sibal has already formed a committee chaired by a former education secretary. The idea behind is to have qualified administrators with exposure to education to run the education controlling bodies. No doubt, Sibal's idea is good though the original idea of having an IES was floated by late PV Narsimha Rao. With his intention of reforming the education sector, Sibal should be able to give a concrete shape of his idea soon.

But having an IES in place will not be the solution to the problems that Indian Education Sector is facing today. From an asymmetrical secondary education system over-complicated by numerous state and central education boards to universities that specialize in producing non-employable graduates- the sector needs a overall makeover. Something similar to banking sector has undergone in early nineties or telecom sector in mid-nineties or insurance sector early this decade.

A look at our school education system shows us the dominance of coaching classes in every subject. Each state has a board of it's own and syllabus followed by each one of them is notably different from the other. Even at central level we have two boards competing with each other. The difference in approach to teaching and assessment creates significant division between students. For example a student completing her 10th from Maharashtra Board may have scored 90%, whereas a student of similar merit completing her 10th from Andhra Board or WB board may have scored 83%.

This difference arises as some boards prefer assessing students on objective type or "defined response" question items whereas some others prefer subjective type or "constructed response" questions. To elaborate a paper of History in board A may ask "who was the father of Indian Constitution" and give 4 options to choose from. Whereas in board B the question may be " write a brief note on the father of Indian Constitution". In the later scenario, the scoring pattern depends on the evaluator but in the former either you score or you don't. We are not talking of the pros n cons of the systems, but sheer difference in approach creates barrier between candidates from different boards.

Another major problem that our school education faces today is the over dependency on "cut-off" marks. Any candidate scoring more than 85% would like to opt for science, without knowing if the required aptitude is present in her or not. As a result a significant number of candidates score much below expectation in their next board assessment. In addition every science student wants to opt for engineering, leaving almost none to pursue pure science based research. The coaching classes become paramount over others especially in the 10+2 stages.

What we need is a "psychometric approach" to education. Apart from absolute scores, we need to have a statistically proven national conversion formula to treat all students on an equal plain. And apart from board exam percentages, schools should introduce an interest inventory mapping as early as from 8th standard to help the student select her best fit career path. Parents need to equally counseled about the prospects of "non-conventional" careers. Otherwise just having a set of government officials dedicated to one service will not create any impact, beyond having another additional cadre option for UPSC exam aspirants.

CAT n Mouse- a better gameplan

2009-12-02T20:41:00.000-08:00

Since last Saturday (28-Nov), a lot of newsprint and airtime have been spent in analyzing what went wrong with the computerized version of Common Admission Tests to IIMs (CAT). Self proclaimed experts have occupied significant media space telling the lesser mortals how conducting CAT in a computerized version was suicidal for the IIMs. I don't intend to add a few more words to that, my attempt here is to explain what could have saved the day for the organizers of online CAT.

The basic reason a test is conducted through computer is to reduce the "turn-around time" or the time taken from beginning of the test to publication of results. Conventional mode of conducting an examination in Paper and pencil includes cumbersome logistics of printing question papers and transporting them along with OMR (optical mark reader) sheets as well as collecting them back. Apart from consuming resources to a great extent, the process also puts the security of examination in question as physical transportation always has a higher risk of exposure associated with it. A computer based examination reduces logistical hassles to almost zero and processing of answers become a few minutes job. And as the entire data normally travels through a VPN (virtual private network), the risk of data exposure becomes minimal.

If we look at the computer based CAT, it violated the basic principles of online testing even before it began. IIMs only adopted a computer based delivery model of a paper-pencil exam. For close to 250,000 candidates, they decided to have 20 testing sessions in 10 days; proposing an average of 12,500 candidates per session. Whereas the worlds leading online tests like GRE experiences about 750- 800 candidates in a single session across the globe, during peak load time. The number is around 350-400 for GMAT. On a single day GRE experiences less than 3000 candidates worldwide, GMAT count does not cross a thousand. Whereas IIMs expected average 25,000 candidates to complete the exam per day. It doesn't take an expert to say that IIMs could not get their basic maths right. And not to ignore the fact that weekends are the preferred dates for working professionals who constitute close to half of the test taking population of CAT. To start the test therefore on a weekend was the biggest blunder that IIMs could have done. There is no better way to stress the server on a first time exercise.

The primary advantage both GRE and GMAT enjoy is that they are normalized tests. That means if a candidate takes the test in first week of March and gets a score, her score will be comparable to another test taker who would take it in third week of October. In other words, candidates taking the exam any time of the year are evaluated on the same platform, thanks to a strong statistical backbone. This also helps candidates get their scores within a short span of time. IIMs have no such formula in place as they are going to take 50+ days to declare the results, something really unacceptable when it comes to online testing. As a test CAT also has a fundamental error, its too dependent on Quantitative Abilities whereas it has been proved time and again that Quantitative skills are not the only ones required in business leaders. Probably that's the reason IIMs have produced thousands of managers but very few leaders.

Have the IIMs had put their thoughts together, they would have introduced a round-the-year admission cycle with a similar test taking window. Let the applicant choose when she wants to write her test and apply accordingly. The course can begin from a specific date. This model is followed by most the leading business schools of the world. IIMs need to come out of their paper-pencil mindset of holding scores for 55 days. In online test one should get her absolute score immediately, a percentile score may follow later, as people get in GMAT. Also, given the erratic nature of power supply in most of the parts of the country, they should arrange for enough back up. Finally, having a battery of paper-pencil based test ready at each venue so that candidates don't have to suffer from technical glitches. After all, it takes a lot for a candidate to prepare for her dream career destination- whims and fancies of certain individuals confined in ac cabins should not be allowed to ruin her dreams in minutes. The CAT Committee members at IIMs should learn some new lessons in management to manage CAT better because the world has outdated their theories.

Gyanayan- what does it stand for

2009-12-01T03:23:00.000-08:00

In Sanskrit "Gyan" stands for Knowledge and "Ayan" stands for path of travel (Uttarayan / Dakshinayan- the path of travel of the sun towards north / south) or chronicle (Ramayan- the chronicle of Ram). Through this blog, I will try to share the little knowledge I have. The idea is knowledge should travel its own path and get enriched at every corner, with active participation from the readers. At the same time we will chronicle this enrichment. As described in a Chankya Shloka "knowledge is the only asset that none can still, and it increases as you share it". Lets build a knowledge sharing platform that needs no boundary.