IIT Council Rejects Reforms to JEE Advanced

The 52nd IIT Council meeting took place on August 21, 2018, under the Chairmanship of Union HRD Minister, Mr. Prakash Javadekar. During the meeting, the IIT Council confirmed that there would be no change in the pattern of the JEE Advanced exam, and it rejected the JEE Advanced reforms suggested by the HRD Ministry.

A decision was taken to set up IIT-PAL which will help students in preparing for the JEE Advanced exam would be further extended, and would be made available through the SWAYAM portal.

The IIT Council also approved the recommendation to set up a common front to recruit foreign faculty collectively for all IITs.

JEE Advanced Reforms Suggested by the Government and Rejected by the IIT Council:

The government has come up with a proposal to constitute a five-member committee to suggest reforms to JEE Advanced exam. As per the proposal, IIT Madras Director will act as a Chairperson to the committee. The government feels that the changes to JEE Advanced exam are necessary, as only a few candidates cleared the national-level entrance test this year.

Apart from IIT Madras Director, IIT Kanpur Director, National Testing Agency (NTA) Director General and IIT Bombay Professor, Kannan Moudgalya will be the other members of the committee.

Also Read: IIT Council to Discuss Proposal on Scrapping JEE Advanced

The merit list of JEE Advanced 2018 featured only the names of 18,138 candidates, which was 1.6 times lesser than the total number of seats available in IITs. Since 2012, JEE Advanced 2018 merit list recorded the least number of qualified candidates. At the last minute, HRD Ministry directed IIT Kanpur, the organizing committee of JEE Advanced 2018 to release the list of candidates twice the number of seats available in IITs.

With an objective to avoid such last-minute hassles, the government will recommend the setting up of the five-member committee for JEE Advanced reforms. It will be the responsibility of the committee to design a robust and scientific entrance exam system to test the calibre of the candidates as well as to reduce their dependence on coaching institutes.

Also Read: IITs and IISc Likely to Centralize Counselling Process for M.Tech & Ph.D. Admissions

The proposal regarding the allocation of the institute instead of engineering branch in first-year engineering course will be also discussed at the meeting.