Academic Admissions
Most of the institutions and colleges in India don’t get their admission criteria right. This is more so visible in two of the most popular streams, viz., MBA and engineering, and they seem to be evolving with the changing times, technology and shifting student profile.
B-schools across India, even the Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs) have been particularly worried about the excessive presence of the engineers in their schools. Thanks to CAT’s obsession with Quant, engineers have been ruling the roost at b-school admissions.
Of course, they have tried to reverse this trend over the years but in vain. From handing over marks in charity to women candidates, non-engineers and even changing the exam pattern – but engineers still come knocking in huge numbers.
The new IIMs, two years ago, attempted an innovative stunt. They included a written test in the admission process. This, according to a director from one of the new IIMs was to make sure students have at least a basic level of ‘English’. “How else will they become managers in the future and write emails. Good English is a must,” justified the same director.
Although CAT convenor for 2015, Prof Tathagata Bandyopadhyay has said that CAT won’t be skewed to Quant section to bring more diversity in IIMs and other reputed B-schools.
And this is in the creamy layer of colleges. Lower down, cut-offs take a good beating and so do placements and performances.
The engineering space has also seen movement. Admission criteria have changed. To offset the heavy dependence on coaching classes and to provide relief to parents who cannot afford coaching for their wards, the measures were changed two years ago. While there is a scram for the top rung, empty seats stare back in the lower end of the colleges.
Last year, in Maharashtra alone, there were some 50,000 seats vacant.
Will this rigmarole ever end? The craving to become an engineer and later pursue an MBA and flaunt a CV and skills which are so hackneyed is not going to change the job skyline at all. Some originality at the admission level may do the trick.
May be Deepak Agarwal has a few answers in his article.
An excerpt from his article.
