Policy Wise

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Vivek has adequately responded to Abi’s post which argued that the standard of students being admitted in IIT is falling and blamed the proliferation of coaching centers for this malaise.

In his response to Vivek’s post, Abi points towards abysmal number of women in IITs’ and posits that this IS because JEE is biased against women. His argument is based on the fact that girls do better than boys in board exams (which of course is not an indicator of any bias but is ”ideal”), but they fail to crack the JEE because it requires coaching. He further argues that since girls crack other competitive exams like medical entrance examinations in adequate numbers, it’s a pointer towards inherent coaching based gender bias of JEE. In my opinion, this a deeply flawed argument.

Abi’s basic premise that medical entrance exams don’t require coaching or can be cracked without outside help is patently wrong. Just like JEE, medical entrance exams go beyond what is asked in high schools and external coaching is as useful as it is in JEE. I would argue that merely looking at the websites of coaching institutes like Aakash would settle this debate. Since IITs’ enjoy a much higher profile than most medical colleges (AIIMS admits only 50 students), JEE gets highlighted even when the exam is not qualitatively different from a medical entrance exam.

Let’s explore this point further. Admission to post graduate medical entrance is via a common entrance test. No doubt, some branches (clinical branches) are more desirable than others, however, the exam makes no allowance for one’s interest or knowledge in a particular branch. It is purely dependent upon one’s final rank in the entrance exam. Yet, a vast majority of girls continue to opt for gynecology rather than other surgical branches like surgery or opthalmology. You cannot argue that surgery is inherently biased towards women because after all even gynecology is a surgical branch. In fact, if we take this further and look at super-specialist branches like cardio-thoracic surgery or neurosurgery, the number of women is almost negligible.

Now, how can this anomaly be explained in terms of entrance exam based gender bias? Surely, it is a reflection of gender bias inherent in our society but how can you blame the entrance exam for the ills of the society? More importantly, how can you design an entrance exam which reflects none of these biases? Let me add, its not only about biases, the preference for gynecology is also a reflection of the desire of women doctors to opt for a ‘’safer” branch where returns are not only guaranteed but also much faster.

Entrance exams as they exist in India are blunt instruments for selecting students. Unless one is prepared to adopt the American system with all their inherent subjectivity, merely tinkering with one particular exam won’t make much of a difference.

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