IIT faculty resorts to mass leave

Unhappy with their revised pay package, about 450 professors from the Indian Institute of Technology - Bombay (IIT-B) went on a day long mass casual leave on Monday.

They were protesting the “unacceptable pay structure” under the Sixth Pay Commission fixed by the Ministry of Human Resource Development.

The All-India Faculty Federation has submitted a memorandum to the ministry and will await a response till September 4. If the ministry does not respond till then, the professors have threatened to go on a hunger strike on September 5, which is celebrated as Teachers’ Day.

Union Minister for Ministry of Human Resource Development Kapil Sibal said he would look into the matter and discuss with the officials concerned.

Holding a huge banner that read ‘Dignity at Stake’, IIT-B professors carried out a silent protest around the campus. “The packages offered will not attract fresh talent in the campus,” said Professor Bharat Seth, president, IIT-B Faculty Forum.

For instance, under the new package, PhD students will be hired only after a three-year work experience outside IIT, else they must be hired as lecturers on contracts.

“However, under the existing system, PhD student can be directly hired as assistant professors. In a scenario where getting faculty is tough, we won’t get anyone if the new rule comes into place,” said Seth.

The ministry has also not agreed to scholastic pay of Rs 15,000 to be given as entry-level qualification for PhD students, which exists in science institutions like Defence Research and Development Organisation.

The faculty at IIT-Madras also went on mass casual leave on Monday, while those at IIT-Delhi will do so on Tuesday.

Source: Hindustan Times

Class XII marks may play key role in IIT entry

CHENNAI: Marks scored in the Plus Two board examinations are likely to become a key determining factor in addition to performance in the Joint Entrance Examination (JEE) for admission into the prestigious Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) by 2011.

In a couple of months, a pan-IIT committee, formed by the Unionhuman resource development
ministry to suggest reforms to JEE, is expected to submit its report recommending ways to factor in the marks scored by students in higher secondary examinations while preparing the IIT merit list. A meeting of all IIT directors and JEE representatives in Chennai over the weekend discussed the proposed changes. ``We hope to devise a methodology to compute a normalised Plus Two cut-off eligibility score for each educational board (CBSE, ICSE, and State Boards). If it's approved, then only students who have scored this cut-off mark would become eligible to appear for JEE,'' IIT Madras deputy director V G Idichandy, who is heading the committee, said on Monday. The present eligibility norm of an aggregate score of 60% in Plus Two determined by the IIT standing council, as opposed to 85% recommended by a JEE review committee four years ago, is considered too poor a benchmark. The move comes in the backdrop of widespread concern among top academicians over the current IIT admission system which is entirely dependent on JEE scores and ignores the board examination results. The inherent weakness of such a system is that IITs have been able to largely attract only students ``conditioned for JEE'' by high profile coaching centres in Kota and Hyderabad. Such students who lack ``raw intelligence'', as described by IIT Madras director M S Ananth, are at times at sea after entering the campus. ``We are collecting data on Plus Two results of the past four to five years from different boards in all states to base our recommendation on. Much will depend on how we compute an acceptable method to normalise the marks scored in different boards. You have nearly 40 boards of education in India,'' Prof Idichandy said. However, the even more difficult part is to convince authorities of all the boards to declare Plus Two results within a specified time frame every academic year. ``This will be crucial for us as we have to base JEE on Plus Two results. This is where a common school board, at least at the level of higher secondary education, which has been proposed by HRD minister Kapil Sibal, will help in determining any all-India merit list,'' he said. Idichandy acknowledged JEE can't be abolished ``but we want to give as much importance as possible to the performance of students at the school level'' in IIT admissions.

source:TOI