Multiple Entrance Examinations Work As "Entry Barriers"

It appears that our Honorable HRD Ministry and its even more Honorable Minister Mr. Arjun Singh are hell bent on providing justice to the real needy, poor and socio-economically marginalized sections of the society. However because all his noteworthy efforts towards OBC reservation have come to a temporary halt due to the unfavorable Supreme Court verdict passed recently, as responsible citizens we must help our Ministry to find alternate means to achieving its broader goals.

Here is a suggestion that the Ministry should look at to keep itself busy, one which should receive no confrontation from most of the students or guardians, or the broad society in general.

The daughter of one of my colleagues is in the final year of +2 this year. The board exams now being over, what awaits her now is a run of competitive exams like IIT-JEE, AIEEE, various state level JEEs, few private engineering and medical college exams, the AIIMS test, ISI ... the list can be indeed long.

The picture is no different after graduation when most young students aspire for an MBA degree. There are CAT, JMET, XAT, MAT ... no difference here either - the list is equally long.

If one wants to apply for even a few of them, it may cost one tens of thousands of rupees in terms of application fees alone. Add to that the process of application and lack of infrastructure in rural areas, one immediately understands how difficult it is for good rural students to compete with their urban counterparts. For MBA admission, there are interviews again.

Irrespective of the justifications on costs incurred by respective institutes and specific knowledge/aptitude they seek from their entrant students, when one examines how a student from rural or semi-urban place faces the economic and other burdens, one can easily concur that these separate multiple exams are nothing but an effective "entry barriers" that favor students from metros and relatively well-off families.

We know that people in Mumbai or in any major metros won't like distant relatives from rural places to come and stay with them for a few nights - because space is too precious. As most of these exams have centers in major metros/state capitals, any student from smaller towns or villages needs to take on the additional burden of travel - which adds to physical exhaustion along with the economic costs. Many even may not have relatives at these exam centers, and as most of them can't afford hotel-stay multiple times; they therefore may have to directly come to the exam centers without even having the opportunity to arrive fresh for the exams. The urban students at least don't face these additional traumas.

Irrespective of the USPs these exams offer (or as claimed by the organizers), one simply can't ignore the basic obvious monetary benefits they accrue to the different institutes. The costs are multiple for the end-consumer, the stress is multiplied to students and guardians and in the name of uniqueness, this has indeed been taken too far stressing all students in general and, particularly, economically marginalized students from remote areas.

In the name of freedom and competition, many of us mostly forget the basic infrastructure, policies, systems that the U.S. offers through standardization. Irrespective of boards or school, there is one SAT, one GRE, one GMAT. And true, in case a good student accidentally badly performs in any of these critical exams, s/he can take that again without even losing a year.

We saw some developments on this front from government in regulating and controlling number of exams - limiting to two or three for MBAs couple of years back. The proposal eventually had a natural death as there was opposition from vested bodies. One isn't ruling out possibilities of genuine oppositions; however with adequate representatives from these various institutes in an apex body like the formal Educational Testing Service (ETS) or its present form the GMAC (Graduate Management Admission Council) adopted through ACT Inc. and Pearson Vue, most of the genuine grievances against retaining only one admission test in India should get addressed.

Otherwise it's a criminal offence we are practicing by stressing all students and guardians unnecessarily, and putting an enormous economic and physical burden to students who come from rural backgrounds, who are the worst sufferers.

A true reservation was to be meant for them - wasn't it? Well, till our government works out the basis for controversial reservation, one can always expect a speedy action from our Honorable Minister and his Ministry so that these types of effective "entry barriers" that act against these bright rural students from economically poorer families are removed.