The author of the article has just completed +2 with flying colours

This article deals with the abolition of entrance exams by the TamilNadu state government. These are my own views on this issue. I firmly believe in what I say. First of all, here are the explanations given by the TamilNadu State government for cancelling the entrance examination. Let us consider them one by one in detail.

• Uplifts the state of rural students in professional college admissions.
• Reduces Stress and Tension among the students.
• An end to the TNPCEE coaching trade.
• A Direct, genuine system for admissions.

Uplift of Rural Students:

I am not sure in which way it would benefit the rural students in the admissions to professional courses. It is said that the entrance exam suppresses the rural students while the urban area students have access to several coaching institutes which aid them scoring more marks in the entrance examination. An entrance exam is the one in which a student can show his originality beyond any text material. The government should be ashamed to say that the entrance prevents rural people from entering professional courses. It should have taken the responsibility of coaching up the students to really think.

Einstein says “The very purpose of education is to train the minds to think” The object of entrance exam for professional colleges is to ascertain whether the student has clear understanding of the subject and not to go by the marks . But our plus two exams just test the memorizing skills of the students. Most of the schools in our state are just bending backwards to make them score well, and even average students get centum marks. So it is not fair to screen the students on the basis of the these norms. Hence abolishing the entrance is in no way a solution. An effective solution would be to conduct entrance classes integrated with the plus 2 for the whole year by the government itself in villages. After all the syllabus of entrance examination is same as the higher secondary syllabus. The same higher secondary staff can take up this task.

Also the abolition will lead to undeserving students filling up the seats which will finally result in the decrease in the standards of the professionals that come out of the colleges. Another sad fact is that the students of Tamil Nadu are already lagging behind in the all India level exams such as the IIT-JEE, AIPMPD, AIEEE etc., and by abolishing the entrance exams our standard will further go down. Abolition of entrance exam will close the other door for the students also. So if a student could not write - for reasons of ill health or any other reason on the exam day- say biology, he can never become a doctor. This is not fair. There must be another door open for the students.

Reduces Stress and Tension among the students:

Though this may be true for the next year, this year it has really increased the stress and tension of the students. Already since both the marks (the HSC and TNPCEE) have been released most of the students have hoped that certain colleges will be their future campus. This announcement is a great disappoinment for the toppers in entrance exams. This had merely increased their mental stress. Also another affected set of people are the CBSE candidates. It is well known that the standards of CBSE exams are tougher than our state board’s. Hence comparing those students with others by means of the same criteria is simply meaningless.

An end to the TNPCEE coaching trade:

Needless to say, if TNPCEE is abolished, coaching is diverted to coach up the students for AIEEE. This is the current trend in the coaching institutes. In some coaching institutes they have already started shifting students to AIEEE batch. So the coaching trade is not really stopped but only diverted.

A Direct, genuine system for admissions:

I cannot understand on what basis the government says that this is the direct system. Imagine the situation where there are 300 students with centum in all three subjects while there are only 250 seats in stanley or MMC. In what order will the seats be filled? In alphabetical order(!!!!!)?. So the fourth criteria will definitely affect a lot of people. Already one of our political leaders has suggested to consider the tamil marks as the fourth criteria. I can not understand what our excellence in tamil has to do with engineering and medicine.

A Final Thought:

The AIEEE, IIT-JEE, BITSAT and many other professional exams just aim to bring out the understanding of the students in their subjects. But our Tamilnadu government wants our engineers and doctors to be only good memorizers.

We can set the question paper of the next year to ascertain the student’s application of the Knowledge and then abolish entrance exams. It will be somewhat meaningful then. The parents who had spent thousands for coaching the students for entrance exams and the students who had burnt the midnight oil for getting good marks in the entrance exams will now find their efforts to go waste. Some students are really in great depression, especially the CBSE students for whom getting centum is just a dream. The Tamilnadu government can make the +2 exam question paper from next year in such a way as to screen the students for professional courses.

If any polling is done in this accord, most of the people would welcome this decision because many of them are not good scorers in the TNPCEE. That too, this year the maths paper was a challenging one. Hence all top scorers will be against this decision and all others will be in favour of the governments order.

A committee should be formed consisting of educationists and its decision should be made final before the decision is taken to abolish entrance exams.

However as the exam was already conducted for this year and results published, the existing method should be followed,while for next year, the order to dispense with entrance exams can be considered.