Retain CET — but reform is overdue
M.R.G. APPARAO
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The test, considering the way it is being conducted, has only been reduced to a `quiz programme'
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THE ANANDAKRISHNAN Committee, constituted by the Tamil Nadu government to go into the technicalities of scrapping the Common Entrance Test (CET), has completed its public hearings at Chennai and Madurai. But does the CET in the present form really meet the objectives?
Common entrance examinations are essential as they provide a common platform to evaluate students from different streams.
A matter of chance
But CETs, considering the way they are being conducted, have only been reduced to "quiz programmes." Success in these examinations is today a matter of chance and more often than not deprives deserving candidates of opportunities to pursue courses in professional education. The tests need to be more scientific so that only the candidates who will ultimately turn out to be good professionals are chosen.
But what is the alternative? One only needs to look at the way the SAT (Scholastic Aptitude Tests) and the GRE (Graduate Record Examinations) are conducted in the United States. Their purpose is similar — admissions into various universities for students passing out from different schools. That the scores obtained in these tests are internationally accepted is well known.
These tests are successful since they have been designed to achieve reliability and validity. Repetitive attempts by candidates result in near identical scores (within tolerance limits) and prediction of the performance of the student is accurate. The SAT and GRE achieve these by administering the tests to a control group and reporting the result of the candidates is with reference to the control group.
The purpose of any test is to discriminate a performer from a non-performer. Any question in a test must also contribute towards this discrimination. There is no point in framing a question which everyone can answer or one which no one can answer. The percentage of people who can correctly answer the question is also called the degree of difficulty. The higher the degree of difficulty of a question, the fewer the people who answer correctly. The weightage given to a question may be a function of its degree of difficulty. Each question and the test as a whole should contribute towards the prediction of a performer.
The present situation in Tamil Nadu presents a golden opportunity for our educationists and policy makers to take steps in this direction and match the CET to international standards. The CET should be designed to identify those who may do well academically and also in employment situations. It must be reliable and valid. This is what international tests today achieve.
Our planners do not need to look far. The CAT (Common Aptitude Tests) conducted by the IIMs and the Joint Entrance Examination (JEE) for admissions into the IITs are good points of reference. Each question that appears in these examinations is given a weightage based on its degree of difficulty. Difficult questions carry more marks while easy ones are assigned less marks.
Normalisation
An alternative to CET for undergraduate admissions to Engineering and Medicine is the model followed earlier by BITS, Pilani. Normalise the 12th standard marks of various streams and then determine the rank order. This normalisation is scientifically superior to the CET examination in its present form.
Even the CET now being conducted for admissions to the MBA and MCA courses in the State needs a re-look. Admission to the government quota for these courses is based only on these tests, which is very incorrect. These tests at best are only suitable as qualifying examinations and should never be the sole criterion for admissions.
There is no institution in the world that admits students to the MBA programmes based purely on the performance in entrance examinations. Even among the IIMs, each institution has its own interpretation of the CAT results and CAT is not the sole criterion for admission. If that is so with the CAT, how can the CET — without establishing reliability and validity — conducted by the government be the only criterion? The MBA course in particular requires several attributes, many of which can never be determined by a single examination. The policy makers should devise a system that is fair and accurate.
apparao@vsnl.com
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