Engineering admissions: Clever clause in pact nullifies entrance test
By a smart act, the very relevance of the engineering entrance exams has been called into question.
Such is the scenario that emerges with the state government agreeing to the demand of the Kerala self-financing engineering college management association (KSFECMA), which represents 93 SF engineering colleges, that even those who have not qualified the entrance exam be allowed to be admitted to the management seats.
The stage for the same had already been set in this year’s agreement between the government and the KSFECMA.
A clause of the agreement itself was devoted for this, drafted in a very clever manner, to escape an unsuspecting eye.
Clause 15 of the agreement between the state government and the KSFECMA reads that “A separate list (Pre-normalization) of all the students who appeared in KEAM entrance examinations (engineering stream) in the Order of Merit will be made available for the purpose of selection of students by the educational agency / member colleges for their admissions under this agreement….”
“…This list (pre-normalization) will be made available to the managements by the government within a week from the date of publication of the KEAM results, and the list shall contain the details of the students including the pre-normalization rank, subject, total marks, name and roll number to enable the member colleges to complete the admissions to seats for which admissions have to be made by managements,” it adds.
Experts say this means the colleges can take students to management seats without considering the results of the entrance examination; and the KSFECMA’s recent advertisement asking students who were disqualified in entrance to apply to their management seats confirmed this.
A total of around 1,04,000 appeared for the entrance exam this year; of which, 27,000 students were disqualified, having been unable to secure the minimum 10 marks out of the 480 marks in two papers each.
This also means, by just appearing for the entrance, students can get admission to B.Tech.
“I don’t agree to the argument that those who are able to pass the Plus One and Plus Two don’t know maths and science subjects.
However, this step is a retrograde one,” said Dr Achuthsankar S. Nair, former member of the committee that suggested reforms to the medicine and engineering entrance examinations.
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