Yesterday, the Honorable Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu, Ms. J Jayalalitha, announced that the TNPCEE has been abolished. For the uninitiated, the TNPCEE is the Tamil Nadu Professional Courses Entrance Examination, the entrance examination for entry into all professional courses in Tamil Nadu. In one stroke, a major institution has been nullified. A budding industry dependent on the TNPCEE has been crushed. But that doesn’t really bother me. What is bothering me really is the magnitude of change that would be brought about this move.
Unlike many of my contemporaries, I have never been an Amma hater. Actually, I have been appreciative of some of her bold decisions. While it is a totally different story that she reversed almost every one of the decisions that I had appreciated, the fact still remained that she had a political will that I haven’t been able to spot all that frequently in the Indian political scene. Well, she did have her share of mistakes, and some huge ones at that. But well, in the political scenario that I see around, I don’t think that she really was worse than any of her political rivals. All said and done, she was Okay, I would say. But then, all that stopped today.
You know, there should be areas that shouldn’t be touched by politicians. Areas that shouldn’t be meddled around by the inexperienced. Entrance exams are one such area. I’m sure there were noble intentions behind that lady’s sudden move, but was it a carefully thought out decision? I’m not all that sure.
To begin with let’s see what the obvious implications of this move are for the student population of Tamil Nadu:
1. There is likely to be a greater rural presence in several of the engineering colleges, which I assume is the prime reason behind the Chief Minister’s sudden move. As the official reason states, most rural areas don’t have the presence of an IIPE or some such entrance exam coaching centre. The entrance exam industry has chosen to leave the rural areas quite untapped. And this I guess did create a disadvantage for students hailing from poor, rural backgrounds.
2. The entrance exam “industry” in Tamil Nadu, took a big blow today. That does make me a bit happy. The buggers were charging such exorbitant rates.
Now, there are a lot of not so obvious effects of this move. There are a few that did come up to my mind when I first saw the news ..
1. It doesn’t really matter whether you understand what you study, as long as you can mug it. As everyone who has gone through the process knows, the XII exams are a sham. All that you need to do is mug. You have one year to mug up three text books, end to end, word by word. And that is all you need to do. In the days of the golden old TNPCEE, the entrance exam was the only way you got to really use your brains in the XII standard. At a broad level, it is worth debating whether the current XII exams add any value at all to the students.
2. Comparisons are inevitable to the BITS Pilani way of admission. Now, I’m not a supporter of that either. But in BITS, you are at least expected to score decently in all your subjects. In the new TN model, all you have to do is crack 3 subjects, and manage to pass in the rest.
3. If you are a CBSE/ISC student, sorry sir. You are f**ked. As simple as that. That is, unless you manage to pull of a 99% in your Maths and Science 12th exams. Fat chance of that. The probabilities are gonna work against u. I guess the state board produces at least a couple of thousands of 100% scorers in each of Maths, Physics, Chemistry and Biology. Now what would be the comparable number for the CBSE?
4. Now I wouldn’t go on and explain this in detail, but I would expect the gender ratio in the top engineering colleges to improve significantly. Now, that isn’t really all that bad, is it? Hehe.. I’m sure at least one section of loyal readers are fuming with anger now ..:-) Just joking, people ..
5. The logistics still confuse me. If the current system continues, the number of people scoring the same cut off would be obscenely high. In that scenario, how would seat allocation work?? For example, if 300 people (it could be 3000, for all you know), end up with a cut off 180 out of 200, how would seat allocation work? If lets say 100 of them are after the same course in a college that has only 50 of these seats, would allocation be done in alphabetical order of the candidate name ( With names like Viswanathan, it could be tough luck on that front for some people!!)? If not alphabetical, would there be a lucky draw?? Let’s see how Anna University manages to resolve that.
6. The Chief Minister claimed that the entrance exams play too significant a role in determining the student’s life. Now that role would be taken up by Lady Luck. As I have realized over the years, in a lot of these theory exams, luck, your handwriting, and the mood of the examiner correcting your papers end up playing a huge role. May Lady Luck be with all of you writing your exams this year … But by Law of Averages, some of you would most definitely be screwed irreparably.
Now Ms. Chief Minister, while you may have had some noble intentions behind this unfortunate move of yours, there might still be a way out .. So, a humble request ..
REFORM THE CLASS XII EXAMINATION SYSTEM !!!!
Ms. Chief Minister, it would be so great if you could order a revamp of the XII examination system. Just a bit at least. So that it isn’t the great shame that it is today. Make them a bit objective. Try to encourage the students to think a bit .. to apply thought a bit .. to go beyond those darn textbooks …
But alas!! I know my words are going into invisible deaf ears .. So much for two pages of effort .. All the best all you XII kids .. May the force be with you .. The years to come are gonna be rough
p.s: I personally belonged to the category who could somehow never manage to crack these bloody mindless rote theory exams of Std XII .. And pretty much survived coz of my engineering scores… Probably explains why I’m so passionate about the subject.
