‘Extreme selectie niet gezond’

Nieuws | de redactie
15 augustus 2011 | Enorme tekorten aan professoren en excellente opleidingen leiden tot uiterst strenge selectie aan de poort bij Indiase topinstellingen. Ouders sturen hun kinderen daarom naar boot camps waar zij twee jaar lang monnikenwerk ‘genieten’.

India plans on topping up its current student numbers from 15million to 40 million. Universities, however, are short oncapacities and teachers. A recently published report by theTask Force on Faculty Shortage and Design of Performance andAppraisal System  indicated that India is currently shorton 300.000 professors and that for the next 10 years, 100.000 extrateachers will be needed annually to counter the faculty crunch atuniversities.

The report further states that “the elite Indian Institutes ofTechnology (IITs) and the National Institutes of Technology (NITs)face a faculty shortage of 30-35%. … The 15 IITs need 1693 moreteaching staff immediately and the 20 NITs, 1522 more.” Meerover het rapport zie hier.

Being one of the 1,5%

IITs are especially popular among prospective students. Beingaccepted into one is widely seen as a guarantee to success.Application numbers soar accordingly. A striking 450.000applications reach the IITs for the 8.000 study places they offer,equivalent to a ratio of 1,5%.

The application process itself is harsh and thorough. All IITshave elaborate aptitude tests asking for extremely high scores withone of them even requiring students to have 100% of the testcorrect.

Hopeful parents respond to this competition by sending theirchildren to preparatory study boot camps for up to 2 years. Aregular student at one of these so called ´crammers´ spends 6 hoursa day in class and another 8 to 9 hours doing homework.

Not a healthy system

Pramod Maheshwari created one of these schools in 1993. Hiscompany Career Point currently serves 18,000 students who aim atpassing the IIT entrance exams.

“This system is not very healthy. It is rejecting more talentedpeople than it is accepting, and the students who are not able toqualify start developing complexes and lose faith in their owncapabilities.”


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