Admission Theatrics

This zeal for a good college or course leads to sleepless nights for some, adoption of fraudulent practices for some and a berserk business for the rest. 

Sincere students push themselves to the very limit. It impairs their health and stifles their creativity, which at times makes them take extreme steps. They are made to feel that admission in a good college is the way to Nirvana.

The fraudulent ones adopt dodgy methods, recently four first-position holders in Bihar Board of School Education came out to be a farce. The certificate scams, cheating, copying and other methods of attaining good marks is not an uncommon sight in this country. The coaching centers do brisk business making tall promises. This is a low-risk high-return bearing business. These coaching shops have sprung up everywhere.

All the three positions in the JEE Advanced this year were bagged by students from one such institute. It is a hard fact that an aspiring student cannot do well in the exams without such institutes. The lack of attention towards the regular students was earlier common in Government schools but has now has crept into private schools as well. The system encourages students to gravitate to these coaching institutes. Those who can afford it, pay a hefty sum to tuition centers to see their wards crack the IIT/JEE. 

Kota (Rajasthan) has emerged as a manufacturing hub for those parroting the art of getting good ranks in such competitive examinations. The coaching institutions reap good harvest from their brands through big advertising. The situation is so pathetic that despite thousands in coaching centers, the pass percentage for PMT stands as low as 0.6 per cent.

The cut-offs in various colleges touch the sky, primarily because attaining 90 per cent marks is a mere cakewalk these days. There are more than 90,000 students with more than 90 per cent marks at CBSE plus two level and more than one lakh 20 thousand students at tenth level examination with a grade of 10 CGPA. This makes one to doubt whether India is getting more intelligent or it is the carelessness of evaluators, paper setters or the outcome of a faulty system.

It may be pertinent to mention here that the  repetition of questions and yes or no answers have made things quite shallow and the student feels no need to read extensively – simple refreshers help get the job done.

Besides marks, the other requirement for getting in a good and reputed college is competition and the rank one attains in it. 

This competition is generally held among unequals because of different teaching pedagogies, backgrounds, syllabi, mediums, parental education and school infrastructure etc. The same facilities are not availed by all the students, so the uniform test looks like a misnomer. It, in other words, leads to the promotion of the creamy layer by throwing peanuts to the less sections of society.

This tussle for marks and/or rank is primarily due to the mismatch between the demand and supply. It is no doubt that the institutions of higher learning have grown manifold in recent years, but the irony has been that the standard of the institutions have nose-dived to new depths. 

The public sector institutions under perform for the lack of accountability, syllabus is hardly tuned to the requirements of the society, practical orientation is missing, and research has got replaced by duplicity. Private sector on the other hand is venturing into areas where low investment and high returns can be reaped. The government plan to establish a few new institutions is no solution to the problem but there is an urgent need to upgrade existing institutions. 

It may not be out of way to mention that the buzz about admissions is primarily because students have nothing fruitful to do so. The only option with them remains to attend colleges and universities for a sizeable period of time. 

The outcome after three years of graduation, if analysed properly, will only make the incumbent feel let down. The industry says that they are not usable, they fail to adjust in their traditional occupation, confidence or intelligence is not much improved, some even fail to write an application on their own and the compulsion to land good jobs make opt for post graduation and pushes them again in the vicious circle of marks and rank etc.  The result is a bundle of useless certificates that amount to nothing.

  A racket which allegedly facilitated around 25 fake admissions in top colleges of Delhi University using forged documents was busted by Delhi police and four people were arrested, including a student of the varsity’s Aurobindo college in 2015. 

  Four people were reported to be arrested after a massive fake admission racket in Delhi University colleges was busted in July 2014. The Crime Branch had unearthed irregularities in the admission process through the scheduled caste/scheduled tribe quota.

  A total of 10 fake admissions had been detected at Bhagat Singh College, three at Aurobindo College (Evening), two each at Dyal Singh College (Evening), and Ram Lal Anand College, and one each at Dyal Singh College (Morning), Kirorimal College, Hindu College, DAV College and Kamla Nehru College, in 2013. 

  The Crime Branch investigation into the Delhi University admission racket has revealed that 10 students from Sri Venkateswara College admitted this year had submitted forged documents. Police have informed the principal of the college about their findings.

  The Delhi Police has registered a cheating and forgery case following the complaint of Arun Attri, the chief admission coordinator of Shaheed Bhagat Singh College. In his complaint, Attri said that after scrutinising the admission forms, it came to fore that around 18 students secured admission after submitting forged documents in 2013-14 sessions.