It is that time of the year when lakhs of Indian 18 yr olds who have sacrificed four precious years of their childhood and spent a fortune of their parents’ savings on coaching classes preparing for JEE – the entrance exam for India’s prestigious engineering colleges – IITs, await their fate.
Deebashree Mohanty who has covered Indian education for two decades presents the rather sorry math: Of the 15lakh candidates, “…approximately 2 lakh students scored between 90-99 percentile in both sessions of the JEE Mains put together….”It’s safe to assume that around 30,000 students have scored about 99 percentile combining the results of both Session 1 and 2,” Shekhar Agarwal, from Vidyamandir classes in Noida..
Now here’s the gut punch. The IITs (all 23 of them) collectively offer around 17,385 undergraduate seats, add the NITs (National Institute of Technology) and you get roughly 24,000 more.
That’s approximately 41,000 seats in what most families consider “worthy” institutions, against the approximately 2 lakh students who scored between 90-99 percentile. Based on the high cutoff this year, most of them didn’t even make it to the Advanced stage. There are about 2.5 lakh candidates who will appear for JEE Advanced this year, and only as many as 54,000 (going by trends of the past 5 years) will proceed for counselling.
Someone explain to me how this is a meritocracy?
…In 2022, Session 1 registrations stood at 8.7 lakh. Four years later, that number has exploded to 13.5 lakh for Session 1 alone. The candidate pool has grown by over 50%.
How about the seats? Have they grown in proportion? No, they have crept up by maybe 5%.
We’ve created a system where the definition of “exceptional” keeps shifting. A 99 percentile means you’ve outperformed 99% of test-takers. That should mean something. Instead, it translates to a rank somewhere between 10,000-12,000.
At that rank, Computer Science at any of the original seven IITs, including Bombay, Delhi, Madras, Kanpur, Kharagpur, Roorkee, Guwahati, is a fantasy. The closing rank for CS at IIT Bombay last year was 66.”
However, this aspiration of ordinary Indians does translate into better math elsewhere:
“The Indian test preparation industry has ballooned to an estimated Rs 58,000 crore, with engineering entrance coaching accounting for nearly 40% of this market.
A two-year integrated JEE programme at a top Kota coaching centre now runs between Rs 8-12 lakh in tuition fees. Factor in hostel accommodation, study materials, test series, living expenses, and the inevitable “miscellaneous” category, and families routinely shell out Rs 15-25 lakh.
Kota alone houses an estimated 2.5 lakh students. The annual economic activity here crosses Rs 4,500 crore. This isn’t education, it’s an industry built on parental anxiety and teenage dreams.
…I know families who’ve sold farmland, taken loans against jewellery, depleted retirement savings. All this for a shot at three letters: I-I-T.
The coaching centres advertise their success stories, the AIR 1s beaming from giant billboards, the perfect scorers featured in newspaper ads. What they don’t mention is the thousands who scored 99+ percentile and still won’t get into a top institute.”
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