Shiksha Opinion: Why are IIMs wary of transparency?
It’s not even been a year since I started writing for the education beat – primarily on management education. And interestingly, within this short span, I witnessed two accounts questioning the credibility of CAT exam.
First, it was the case of 80 tampered scorecards. Candidates were admitted on the basis of highly inflated scores. While the primary database with Prometric was intact, scores were tampered on the third party website, Web Weavers.
In the second and more recent case, thousands of test takers pointed out discrepancies in the actual and normalised scores. Read more about it here. Two leading coaching centres of the country even published articles questioning CAT’s normalisation methods – A few Twists in the CAT's Tale! (TIME) and Ajab CAT Ki Gajab Kahani – Dobara (Career Launcher). Similar issues cropped up last year with CAT 2012 conducted by IIM Kozhikode. And the ensuing RTI responses weren't exactly the answers students were looking for.
To understand what is happening I spoke to Vijay Jha, Senior Vice President at Career Launcher. What he claimed was shocking! Jha has been appearing for CAT exam since 1999. He says CAT 2005 was the only paper free of any errors. While CAT 2013 has admitted to one error on Day 10, Jha claims his own slot (on November 11) had a question without a single correct option. He goes on to say that the highhandedness of IIMs are costing the future of thousands students each year.
From a lay man’s perspective, the IIMs' way of conducting CAT definitely lacks transparency. How are normalised scores derived from raw scores? What metrics or yardsticks are being used to normalise the scores of 1.73 lakh candidates? Professor Rohit Kapoor says nothing can go wrong with scores, for everything is based on a computer algorithm.
Ummm... aren’t computer algorithms man-made? Why can’t they go wrong? Wasn’t Amazon selling a book about flies for $23,698,655.93, thanks to a computer algo? Didn’t a Gmail glitch cause thousands of emails to be sent to one man’s Hotmail account?
Simply put, an error can happen anywhere. So, why refuse issuing fresh normalised scores? Rather, re-evaluation will only increase the trust in IIMs.
The court has asked appealing candidates to wait for RTI replies. Unsatisfied, the candidates are now planning to appeal to the High Court or Supreme Court. I visit their Facebook page every day to see these youngsters trying to raise money on their own, so that thay can pay to understand what is going on. Is it fair?
Allegation and anger have always been a part of human history. But so has a need for justice. For IIMs, transparency in scores is the need of the hour. I just hope they agree to do so on their own before an angry mob supported by legal guardians forces it. That definitely will be a blot on their face.
