Everyone, all the way up to the top, is aghast that a college in Delhi is asking for students to have scored 100 per cent even to qualify to apply for an undergraduate commerce seat. Higher Education Minister Kapil Sibal is calling the cut-off irrational, and admitting he would never have made it to college at this rate.
So there you are. Our colleges are looking for undergraduate candidates more accomplished than this country's erudite lawyer-education minister. And why just Sibal, who occasionally punches out poetry on his Blackberry? As CPM leader Sitaram Yechury said, even Shakespeare wouldn't have got into an English literature course if he had to jump over such a high wall.
Why is the wall so high? Well, college managements say, students are performing better and better. And seats don't keep pace with the rising numbers of students. And in the absence of marks, what yardstick do you have to measure a student's competence?
That line of reasoning raises other questions. Should we depend so heavily on marks when we admit students to a course? Shouldn't we consider aptitude (and how is that measured)? And what about the candidate's accomplishments in sports, debating, music, social service? These skills don't show up in marks, but they make for a well-rounded personality, don't they? Is academics all? And should crammers walk away with all the seats just because the more imaginative sorts were too busy trying to figure things out for themselves?
These questions are now being debated, thanks to the Delhi college's absurd admission conditions. Sibal sees in the cut-off a conspiracy to keep science students out of the commerce stream. That's another story altogether, where each stream believes it is so specialised that it will do everything possible to keep achievers in other streams out. (As things stand in most of India, you are married for life to a subject or a stream).
If we allow discretion in seat allocation, we fear it will be misused. If we go just by marks, we end up with situations like the present one, where you need to be super-human just to qualify. And when concessions are made, as they do at Karnataka's professional colleges, the managements collect huge donations and make a killing.
Although our colleges claim to be pursuing in admissions, the passion for excellence in most cases evaporates when they pass and enter public service. India may produce the world's largest number of doctors and engineers, and they do extraordinarily well abroad and in our private sector, but their skills aren't apparent in town planning, traffic management, urban landscaping, rural healthcare or any of the other areas that touch the lives of our millions.
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