How Jamia Millia Islamia failed its own entrance test, and felt 'cool' about it
Universities across India these days are vying for the Institution of Eminence (IoE) tag. They are redesigning their curriculum, reaching out to learned people to join as faculty, upgrading laboratories and refurbishing libraries, but Jamia Millia Islamia in Delhi appears too bored to even join the race.
The university, it seems, is not even capable of holding an entrance exam properly. More worrisome is the university's apparent admission that it can't — and that it is okay to not even try.
The university's lackadaisical approach to holding entrance examinations came to the fore when a student from Guna in Madhya Pradesh filed an RTI after scoring low, despite having worked hard for the entrance exam.
Teepu Jamali, the student under question, had graduated from the university and on April 23, sat for the entrance exam to the Masters in Public Administration.
He decided to file a RTI to get the answer key. Here's what he found:
"The result I got was shocking! There were multiple wrong answers. And considering that they used this answer key to check the papers, many must have lost a lot of marks in the exam."
While the story should have shocked the varsity and forced it into finding out how such a mistake could take place, the administration's reply has been epic. The Jamia administration believes "such things happen".
Jamia's controller of examination, AAA Faizi, said, "There were some complications with the exam which we identified when students complained." Mind you, the administration didn't even know about the blunder till a student took it upon himself to wake up the officials.
But what did the administration do to ensure such things don't happen in the future?
It seems the university isn't even bothered about course correction.
Faizi told The Times of India, "We can give marks to the students who lost out but there are always such cases where minor mistakes like this happen in entrance exams."
So, what Faizi seems to be telling the students is that these things have happened in the past, and they will happen in the future because 'minor mistakes' must be permissible after all. Even if those 'minor mistakes' have huge implications for the future of students.
That a central university can take the matter of incorrectly evaluating students so lightly is worrisome. This also shows how serious the university is about attracting talent to the campus.
One of the questions featured in the test wanted students to answer who wrote the book Exam Warriors. The options given to students were Narendra Modi and Pranab Mukherjee. That this question even figured in the entrance to a masters programme is in itself shocking. That the person setting the answer keys thought, or erroneously put the answer as Mukherjee, makes the story worse.
The year 2018 saw Jamia receive a record number of applications with the number of students registering for its school and university programmes rising by around 15 per cent, but Jamia doesn't seem to be taking this achievement seriously.
Entrance exams are held by institutions to ensure the best enter them and carry forward their legacy. By not taking the process of its own entrance exam seriously, Jamia has compromised hugely on its prestigious legacy.
The likes of former president Zakir Husain, former Bihar governor Akhlaqur Rahman Kidwai, national hockey player Gagan Ajit Singh and actor Shah Rukh Khan have all been Jamia alumni.
Those at the helm of Jamia, including vice chancellor Talat Ahmad, must be mindful of this legacy they carry.
It its taxpayers' money that runs the varsity, even if the university was generating its own revenue, there is no reason or no excuse good enough for playing around with the future of students.
When the row over curfew timings for female students at hostels blew up, Jamia dealt with the issue with an iron hand, involving parents in the process of deciding timings.
We wonder who Jamia is involving in setting its answer keys.
There are so many cases of students committing suicides or going into depression because of failing to get admissions into institutes of their choice.
In such a situation, laxity in conducting exams amounts to criminal negligence.
Jamia must apologise — and produce a roadmap to improve things.