Rethink competitive exams: Evaluate a broader set of student capabilities

livemint.com:

The central conceit of colleges such as Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) is that they are the best. The oxygen that gives life to this conceit is that they get the ‘best’ students. ‘Best’ here has a specific meaning, referring to students who are hard-working and focused, and who adapt well to certain kinds of testing.

These three capacities stand them in good stead even after they graduate. However, these are a small subset of the skills that are desirable and necessary in life. Admission to these colleges is through a competitive exam where students are rank ordered; a few thousand get in and millions get ‘rejected.’ But this doesn’t mean that those who did not get admission were not worthy of such education.

It is just that these colleges did not have enough seats. If there were enough seats, it is likely a very large number of the students would get in, because then admission would be based on an assessment of whether a given student has the requisite capacities to participate in, and benefit from, the educational programme. This would be determined by a set of qualifying criteria assessed by the examination.

Currently, these so-called competitive entrance examinations are really an elimination exercise and not a selection. The latter would admit all those who qualify based on the set of criteria. Let’s now consider three other related issues.