Not a good idea

The Telangana government is toying with the idea of doing away with EAMCET examination for admission to engineering colleges in the state.

The prime motive of the government in mulling over this is to discourage multi-million coaching industry that flourished around the coveted entrance examination.

The proliferation of engineering colleges in the state led to unprecedented increase in the number of seats in engineering stream.

The number of seats is more than that of candidates, thus making engineering entrance examination redundant.

But, this argument is fallacious as the competition for admission into high quality institutions still remains.

Theoretically speaking, entrance examination is more a screening test serving the elimination process. Few hours of entrance examination cannot be superior to two-year intermediate course and performance in it.

But, the reality is far different from theoretical premise. The concrete study of concrete conditions should be the basis for any policy prescription.

The intermediate educational standards are not uniform across the state. The colleges with economic clout are manipulating the practical marks to the disadvantage of students studying in other colleges and those coming from lower socio-economic background.

The evaluation process is too crowded and too erratic to ensure common standards. Admissions into top engineering colleges are decided by a fraction of mark.

When there is no uniformity in evaluation procedures and standard of instruction, the level-playing ground cannot be provided to students.

The Intermediate Board is ill-equipped to handle the evaluation of burgeoning number of students appearing for the intermediate examinations.

The government-stream colleges do not have sufficient number of teachers to evaluate the examination scripts. The Board is compelled to depend upon a vast number of contract lecturers working in the government colleges and teachers working in private colleges.

The private managements often do not spare their high quality teachers to attend to the evaluation duties. This situation makes it difficult to enforce accountability in the evaluation process.

Many premier institutions at national and international level decide their admissions based on competitive performance in objective aptitude tests like GRE, GMAT, CAT or objective entrance tests like IIT-JEE, NEET etc.

The thriving coaching industry cannot be the reason for doing away with EAMCET. The tutorial industry would even encash upon intermediate examinations too. The EAMCET industry will be replaced by an intermediate coaching industry.

At least, the entrance examination is an objective scheme having no room for the subjective assessment of evaluator.

The performance in entrance examination is empirical. Therefore, it’s a non-arbitrary method of selecting candidates for admission to colleges.

The greater volume of candidates appearing for the examinations makes the descriptive mode of testing more vulnerable to subjective and arbitrary evaluation, thus vitiating competition.

The plight of some engineering colleges starving for students is not the result of entrance examination. It’s more to do with the poor quality of educational standards and low employability of its products.

The mushrooming of engineering colleges without enforcement of any regulation is the reason behind present chaos.

The unbridled marketisation of engineering education needs to be checked rather than tinkering with the criteria for admission.