The quality of professional education in Tamil Nadu has been witnessing a rapid downfall in Tamil Nadu during the last few years, the reason quite obvious, the incessant growth of Engineering colleges. The number of colleges has catapulted itself to somewhere around 220 mark compared to about 30 colleges about 7 or 8 years ago. The Professors and Lecturers strength is not enough to cater the sudden spurt of so many colleges all over the state (Source: The Hindu Business Line). The result numerous students just passing out from college have taken the post of lecturers in many colleges. This has lead to degradation in quality of the engineers coming out.
When all were pondering how to tackle this situation, Tamil Nadu Government has come up with a decision which further worsens the situation. The announcement of abolition of TNPCEE exam. it certainly spells doom for professional education. For those who ask how this will affect the quality of education is affected, I will ask a simple question.
In a book which has about 300 pages, is it difficult to score centum after studying it for about one and half years?
(These days, students start studying twelfth portions during eleventh standard itself)
The person who has good memory power can easily score a centum, its about mugging the book, no need that he/she must have understood the subject. TNPCEE served as an ideal filter to separate students who have understood the subject, have analytical and reasoning skills from those who haven't. By abolishing the entrance exams, the quality of student who enters an engineering college will be lowered, resulting in poorer engineers coming out.
The Government’s reasoning that students from rural areas are not able to get coaching for entrance compared to the students in urban areas is a lament reason. If we dig a bit deeper into the entrance coaching that is taking place in most areas, Government school teachers are actively taking part in them. If government wants to provide a good solution for the trouble, they can ask the government school teachers to coach the rural students, is it not possible? (I agree that Teachers-parents association is doing this work, but not highly productive, extra measures can be taken). After all teachers do get salary for month of April and May, so why not ask them to do the job. Will they not raise cries if salary is not given for those two months and then why not ask them to work? No this regime will not do it, because it fears losing votes in the next election from the teacher’s community.
One interesting fact is that, only this Jayalalitha regime during its previous tenure introduced this single window council, thereby making the entrance more effective. In fact this abolishment of exams is with a political motive to silence Dr.Ramadoss, PMK leader who was making a fuss about these exams some time ago. It is quite bad to see politics intervening education, really it augurs well for the downfall of quality education in Tamil Nadu.
When all were pondering how to tackle this situation, Tamil Nadu Government has come up with a decision which further worsens the situation. The announcement of abolition of TNPCEE exam. it certainly spells doom for professional education. For those who ask how this will affect the quality of education is affected, I will ask a simple question.
In a book which has about 300 pages, is it difficult to score centum after studying it for about one and half years?
(These days, students start studying twelfth portions during eleventh standard itself)
The person who has good memory power can easily score a centum, its about mugging the book, no need that he/she must have understood the subject. TNPCEE served as an ideal filter to separate students who have understood the subject, have analytical and reasoning skills from those who haven't. By abolishing the entrance exams, the quality of student who enters an engineering college will be lowered, resulting in poorer engineers coming out.
The Government’s reasoning that students from rural areas are not able to get coaching for entrance compared to the students in urban areas is a lament reason. If we dig a bit deeper into the entrance coaching that is taking place in most areas, Government school teachers are actively taking part in them. If government wants to provide a good solution for the trouble, they can ask the government school teachers to coach the rural students, is it not possible? (I agree that Teachers-parents association is doing this work, but not highly productive, extra measures can be taken). After all teachers do get salary for month of April and May, so why not ask them to do the job. Will they not raise cries if salary is not given for those two months and then why not ask them to work? No this regime will not do it, because it fears losing votes in the next election from the teacher’s community.
One interesting fact is that, only this Jayalalitha regime during its previous tenure introduced this single window council, thereby making the entrance more effective. In fact this abolishment of exams is with a political motive to silence Dr.Ramadoss, PMK leader who was making a fuss about these exams some time ago. It is quite bad to see politics intervening education, really it augurs well for the downfall of quality education in Tamil Nadu.
16 comments:
Hi all.As you rightly said the meddling of politics with education will surely ruin the quality of the latter( i think the vice-versa will be nice!!) and especially Tamil Nadu politics, things are even worse with regimes changing for every five years and the parties here (ADMK and DMK+)dont have a common view even in things such as education.
If we take the abolishment of TNPCEE exams issue,i think the Entance exam and single window admission system has been functioning smoothly for past 10 years or so and if the Govt. decides to abolish it then it is the responsibility of the Govt. to come out with solutins such that how they are going to ensure the quality of students joining the institutions.Here quality means thier analytical skills and logical thinking skills and it is known to everybody that Entrance Exams served as an excellent measure for students' abilities.
One possible solution for this problem is to upgrade the quality of the +2 public exams so that it tests all the skills of a student that are measured using the entrance exam.
One body has to be formed including educationalists like V.C.Kuzhandaisamy(Former VC of Anna University),Govt. Education Officers,Students and people like N.Ram,gyani and people who has done some ground work in issues like these. We should conduct series of brainstorming sessions,consolidate the outputs and the thing is finally the Govt. has to implement the outcome without thinking about votebanks (the politicians immediately think of caste and votebanks before taking any decisions and normally will incline towards the above said two)
one important thing i would like to highlight here is with respect to the quality of the schools run by the Govt. and the reality is they can no way be compared with private schools regarding quality of education,maintenance.etc.i think this thing has a strong connection with the issue we are discussing.This has to be debated and we will discuss about this in a later point of time.
Hi Satish,
Even though I couldn't come to a conclusion on the issue of Abolishment TNPCEE exams, I oppose your views on the high number of engineering colleges.
My argument goes like this. India being a large country has large engineering market.
This requires the country to produce more number of engineers to get hold of this market rather than importing, which weakens the economy. From this we imply that more number of engineers are required, this also means engineers who are capable of producing products of world class standards. So more number of engineers of high quality is required, which necessitates more number of good engineering colleges.
Engineering colleges of high standards can not be achieved all of a sudden; it would take at least a few decades for it to evolve. Let this be the start.
Regards
Prasanna
Hi,
I would like to just elaborate a bit more on this point!!
Let us take a typical +12 student in a village,
The boy finishes his public exams.
He then expresses his desire to go in for professional Education and the father decides to give his son quality eduaction by sending him for entrance coaching to some city.In most cases the father borrows the money needed for this move.
The boy then finally takes up the entrance examination and in at least fifty percent of the cases he joins some engineering college which doesn't even have a good infrastructure.There aren't any good staff even.But all these details are lest known.
The poor father once agains begs for money to give his son "QUALITY EDUCATION" in the end only to be cheated by the college authorities .
This is not an exaggeration but at least 10 - 15 colleges with a very similar case have been closed down (in the past 1-2 years)leaving the poor students helpless . And in most cases these colleges are "owned" by very powerful politicians etc and hence the matter is just hidden away from the common public.
Are all these the benifits of increased number of Engineering colleges?
By abolishing the entrance exams, i feel the govt is actually targeting this section of the rural society, ie the poor fathers ,who are definitely bound to be happy because they don have to beg anyone for the money needed.But is the purpose really solved??
Coming up of engineering colleges has to be welcomed but without plummet in standard of education. The upcoming up of lots of private colleges paying very low salary to the staff is the main reason for talented people not entering into teaching profession which is contrary to reputed institutes imparting quality education. Is there any solution to this predicament that the government/institution/people would or can take?
The abolition of TNPCEE could be the worst blow to professional education in TN.
How do you discriminate really talented students and the just mugups from theory marks? If entrance is not conducted what is the measure to test the intellect of the student? And also altering the exam pattern will not be the solution as not every student wants to take up engineering/Medicine. With out entrance the chances of entering engineering college for a capable student is going down very far below than the actual chance. I feel all the students and parents should protest against this announcement.
The most awful part is that Government is ready to do anything without any second thought about the welfare of people just to stick on to the post, and the nastiest part is we elect one among the two looters or self-centered hypocrites without analysing what has been done by govt to people?or we claim the we are left with no other choice?
The politicians who say –they are helping rural people is just to create an image among people, but they don’t even put a bit of effort other than just criticizing the current government. They could have done lots if they really want to…
how could an effective solution be arrived at?I feel the major role is to be played by the govt but will it???
Hi all , I too agree with mayil. The fact that rural students dont have enough facilities to prepare for TNPCEE is true. For this the main reason is the tamilnadu syllabus.
One can straight away see that the Matriculation syllabus is higher than stateboard and the CBSE is higher than Matriculation.
Through these three streams a person entering the twelth standard ultimately the result is that the rural students who have been given lighter syllabus will suffer.
Ultimtely the quality of eductaion also differs from cities and rural areas. Either eveyone should be given a unique syllabus right from the start or seperate quota for each standard should be maintained. But abolishing the TNPCEE is totally disagreeable.
I earnestly appreciate all of your concerns on this issue. I see a reflection of my own thoughts here. Having dwelled on the problem to great depths, its now time to think of solutions. In my perception there are four suggestive solutions to this problem:
1) Improving the infrastructure of the schools in rural areas with well qualified teachers.
The fact that cost of construction is less in rural areas in comparison to urban areas, by itself should be an urge to go ahead with this. At the same time it is part of the mission to motivate teachers to take up responsibilities in the rural schools.
2) Abolishing political intervention in educational matters.
This can be accomplished by setting up a judicially accepted body to govern educational aspects in the state/country (something like UGC which autonomously governs the functioning of the universities).
3) The most important aspect to be looked into in order to build a successful educational system is to create awareness among the students about quality education and what it can do for them.
Firstly the path of education should be layed in front of them. Secondly, they should be given a foresight as to what they would be if they chose the right educational path.
4) Fee reduction could motivate parents to impart education to their wards.
Education should be at every man's reach. For most of the rural population good education is a forbidden fruit because of their feeble economy.
Once these things are taken care of, having an entrace examination will become inevitable.
I admit that giving suggestions to improve any down cast situation is easy. But implementation is what matters the most. I take it that any suggestion is as good as a seed sown in the direction of implementing it. It is practically impossible to architect an ideal educational environment but trying to achieve one will do wonders. Share your perceptions on the same...
I earnestly appreciate all of your concerns on this issue. I see a reflection of my own thoughts here. Having dwelled on the problem to great depths, its now time to think of solutions. In my perception there are four suggestive solutions to this problem:
1) Improving the infrastructure of the schools in rural areas with well qualified teachers.
The fact that cost of construction is less in rural areas in comparison to urban areas, by itself should be an urge to go ahead with this. At the same time it is part of the mission to motivate teachers to take up responsibilities in the rural schools.
2) Abolishing political intervention in educational matters.
This can be accomplished by setting up a judicially accepted body to govern educational aspects in the state/country (something like UGC which autonomously governs the functioning of the universities).
3) The most important aspect to be looked into in order to build a successful educational system is to create awareness among the students about quality education and what it can do for them.
Firstly the path of education should be layed in front of them. Secondly, they should be given a foresight as to what they would be if they chose the right educational path.
4) Fee reduction could motivate parents to impart education to their wards.
Education should be at every man's reach. For most of the rural population good education is a forbidden fruit because of their feeble economy.
Once these things are taken care of, having an entrace examination will become inevitable.
I admit that giving suggestions to improve any down cast situation is easy. But implementation is what matters the most. I take it that any suggestion is as good as a seed sown in the direction of implementing it. It is practically impossible to architect an ideal educational environment but trying to achieve one will do wonders. Share your perceptions on the same...
Hi chaps,
If we dig deep into these roots of all these mishaps occuring, we find a political hand in all these issues. Just the mere thought that the ruling party should hold tight his grip on the state, they are warding off these important matters of the state.
It is from the rural parts of the state, where these politicians gain masses of votes, whereas the city-dwelled people enjoy the holiday on the eve of elections instead of spending it in the polling booth. So politicians target the villagers ultimately.
The important point i would like tio emphasise is that, atleast the Education minister should be well educated so that he's aware of what will be the consequences of such drastic steps. Presently India being a land where the IT services are blooming, shouldn't the government ensure necessary steps to take it forward amongs all barriers.
By abolishing TNPCEE, the govt has proved to be on the defensive mode. The don't realise that such a step will be short-lived and it will be the students who join the Engg colleges are going to suffer and it will be reflected on the entire nation. I can accept that the children evolving out of rural schools will be lacking the exposure. Then arrange some steps so that they are aware of what is happening in the outside world. There goes a saying in tamil "for the fear of rats in the house, they burn the whole house". This is the current trend here in Tamil Nadu. Infact in Andhra Pradesh, for Engineering counselling, they don't take the main subjects into account and the Entrance exam (EAMCET) is alone considered.
Our state should have a revolution like the Mudhalvan, then we can expect it to flourish, else it will be doomed if it falls into the hands of either of these two pranksters.
FYI, Most of the students in rural area are not aware of such entrance exams.
So such additional exams may avoid them in entering colleges. So rather than having an additional exam, we can very well change the question pattern of the public exams. The pattern should be framed such that only the fittest survive and that will be an easy way to find one's skills.
At this point i just want to have a question. The students in the cities like Chennai, Coimbatore, Madurai etc., get coaching classes and preperation materials from renowed institutes. And even some questions are rpeated from the materials they study. Now think about an ordinary 12th student in a village. Is he not a citizen of India. Just because he lacks in wealth or lacks in exposure, he is not offered an Engineering seat. Is this not Unfair? Now all have an equal chance of getting a seat. What ever may be the course content or the portions, the choices are the same.
The above anonymous comment was by me. Jayakumar S.
I too agree with your view–‘lecturer’s lack of field knowledge degrades the value of the engineers coming out’.
Secondly, coming to the TN Governments decision to abolish TNPCEE,
What is needed to score high in TNPCEE EXAM?
1) Get the latest edition of TNPCEE study materials (like IIPE...Etc so many available in the market.)
2) Start practicing from 11th standard.
3) Complete two or three institute practice books and last five year Question papers before appearing for the exam.
4) A coach for explaining all the difficulties in those problems.
5) Periodic test.
The students who are capable of doing these steps will score high in the TNPCEE. This is the fact. Do you agree with this?
The more he practices the faster he solves the problems in the exam. Number of attempts made is proportional to the tricky Questions and the way outs he remembers. The possibility for ‘Out of material and previous year Q paper’ questions in TNPCEE is very less. Here the process of mugging up is different from the Public Exam. For TNPCEE the student needs to mug up the way outs for all complicated questions. (Other than this I can say one must have a good memory power, fast determination, observation ...Etc –the qualities which differentiates individuals).
Do you think other than this a student needs to apply his/her physics, chemistry or mathematics knowledge?
My opinion is NO.
There is a very little chance of apply reasoning and analytical skills. I never say that all the students who scored high in the TNPCEE have understood the subject.
This is the most expensive practice or study - which rural poor guys can not afford.
(Hope we all are aware of the fees).I feel TNPCEE helps to differentiate poor, rural students from wealthy urban students.
I agree that all the Government school teachers (not only rural school) are very careless in completing the syllabus and making the student to understand the subject. But they could be running a number one tuition centre in the city.
There is one more fact we need to look into. The Government school teachers are busy from the month of Feb in conducting Practical Exams for all the schools (including private schools) in that particular education district. So they don’t have enough time to take care of the students. The second problem is our Government is not ready to fill the vacant places so the teachers need to handle too many students – which is so very difficult. In the month of May Govt. school teachers are engaged in paper correction. So it is not possible for the Govt. to ask them to work for more than 8 hours a day. So the Govt. school teachers can not conduct ‘FREE Entrance Coaching classes’ for rural students. Can you compare the quality of free coaching centers with highly paid one?
I feel our legislative system is not that strong to eliminate this difference.
Do we need TNPCEE??
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