Internal evaluation=30= 5+ 15 + 10, is a simple enough
equation. Most of us who have done their preliminary 3R’s should be able to
understand that. According to guidelines followed the initial 5 marks is for
attendance in a course over the semester. 15 marks are allocated for two of class
tests (not conducted by the university, but by the constituent colleges). The
third component of 10 is for class performance, including how the student
performed in assignments given during the semester.
With an objective evaluator, a class of 60 students can be
expected to get 0, 30 and everything in between. As theory tells us, the
distribution of the marks will be well distributed and will follow a “normal”
distribution. This is a bell-shaped curve with a peak at the average and
trailing off on both ends. Fewer and fewer students would obtain high marks
tending towards 30, and the number of students obtaining lower than average
numbers also will similarly trail off. In fact, any evaluation of any group of
individual should follow this pattern. During my engineering training, I had 40
odd years back, and passage through my professional life reinforced these
ideas. This is one issue that came up often during yearly appraisal time. I
invariably found the concept to be applicable, in general.
However, 40 odd years is a lot of time. Things change. I
know meaning of something does depend on the context. However, I never expected
a concept like this to be dependent on the context so much. What was shocking
was to discover that it all came down to economics!
Over the intervening period, engineering colleges were
allowed to be privately run, “for profit”.
When this sector opened up, a lot of these colleges came up. According
to a recent count the total number, all over the country, is close to 4000.
They were doing quite well until a few years back. However, over the last three
years these colleges are facing a crunch in admissions. One full batch
contributes to a healthy cash flow for next three years. Groups of 60 students
in each batch, running through the establishment provides the butter and jam on
the daily bread easily.
Now that there is heavy competition, in finding students, there
are two things that really matter. First metric is the pass percentage of
students through the four year stint. The second measure is how many of the
students coming out get absorbed by the industry. That is directly linked to
how well the students score in their overall CGPA/GPA or whatever. So then, it
is absolutely necessary that students move from year to year and obtain good
marks too. The college administration needs to facilitate this process to keep
the reputation of their college high and ensure full batches at admission time.
That skews the meaning and implementation of the equation we started with.
Besides the 30 in internal evaluations, you need to score as
much as possible in the possible 70 marks allocated for the semester final
examination conducted by the university. These 30 marks assume significance in
helping passing rates, as well as for getting high grades. It did not sink all
in one day, but after I spent some five semesters in the system. Having said,
“enough is enough” to my working days, I had decided to take it easy. A friend
offered an opportunity to work at one of these new generation colleges. This
had started in 2002 and by 2009 (when I came aboard) it had seen those smooth
times. Hard times, scarcity of students started from the admission season
immediately after I came in.
This was the peak time when a semester ends, and these
internal marks are finalized and sent over to the University for compilation of
results. Few days into the job, I received a call from the principal’s office,
“you are needed to attend the meeting on internal evaluations in the
principal’s office at 3 PM." I
expected this meeting was convened to moderate individual mark lists to avoid
any significant variations across evaluators. One of my colleagues, trying to
be helpful to this newbie, confided, “the first agenda would be to decide on a
minimum marks to be given.
University requires that students attend a minimum of 75% of
classes, in each course to qualify for the finals. Even in a residential
college like this one, there are very few students who meet the criteria. Normally, if you were to distribute 5 marks
for the attendance from 0 to 100 percent attendance, you will need to set aside
1 mark for every 20 percent in attendance. Not so, one of my colleagues already
updated me on the philosophy of it. He told me “no one can really be
disqualified just for attendance! These colleges charge a lot of fees, and the
paying customers will be unhappy, if they are disqualified and to pay for that
semester again.” Thus, as most students need to qualify for the finals,
everybody must be given a 4 or a 5.
There is a keeping up with Joneses’ angle always. All other
similar colleges do it. Students know
exactly what the other colleges are doing. When results were declared, there
are agitations by students when expectations are not met in final results for a
semester. We, teachers are given example, by name, of colleges who sent out a
28 or 29 for all students. That can look quite awkward, and the purpose of this
meeting was to give the marks list a semblance of realness. So the principal
opined that, “about 10% students should get the 80% to 90%(defined, grade E)
band and about 5% the 90% to 100% (grade O) band and similarly about 5% in the
40% to 50%(grade A) band.”
That leaves the class test and the class performance issues.
There are two of these class tests taken. One test is conducted towards
beginning of a semester and one towards the close of it. Each is for 15 marks.
The final equation has 15 allocated to it. You need to decide how to take the
two tests into account. “Let us take the better of the two” was the directive.
Average of the two, I thought, would be a fairer evaluation. However, the
reality on the ground dictated otherwise. The spread of marks, in the first
class test, would be clustered around 0 to 5 with a smattering of students
getting between 5 and 15. Students would not have warmed up enough by the first
class test was the prevalent excuse. This happened despite liberal marking.
Second class test, usually, were no different!
Assignments, when actually given, came back as if each
student has made Xerox copies of some original. At times, you could detect two
or more originals. Thus, in truth, these 10 marks were just the elastic parts
to be stretched to fit the directives. Some amount of stretch was available in
the class test category too.”What happens to the few good students who are there?"
I asked one of the veterans who’s been in the system for five years. “Isn’t it
unfair to those students who actually attend classes, get excellent marks in
the tests and score well in the assignments?” They may score 24 to 30 yet do
not get the benefit of the bonus marks. In real life, and I have seen this
first hand, the worst disservice you can do to a good guy is not to recognize
that.
The main argument for internal evaluations is that, given an
objective evaluator; students are evaluated best by the teachers who directly
interact with them. However, when the system gets skewed as I found, it loses all
meaning. It does not help produce good engineers. A recent well known survey
found that less than 25% of engineering graduates is even employable. I am not
surprised! I am reminded of the consolidation phase of an industry. When a
sunrise industry begins, a lot of players jump in. Soon, you arrive at an
oversupply situation. Consolidation phase comes thereafter, when only the
quality producers and service providers survive. Among other things, market
dynamics will help improve the situation, I guess!
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