Scrap online CAT, say training institutes

AHMEDABAD | NEW DELHI: A day after the Union HRD ministry directed a probe into the technical glitches at the ongoing Common Admission Test (CAT), private training centres demanded scrapping of the computerised MBA entrance.

The trainers on Wednesday, the fifth-day of the ongoing exam, raised questions over the fairness of the testing process. Apart from raising questions on the poor infrastructure and technical glitches that have led to some 10,000 students (out of 1.25 lakh students so far) miss the test, the trainers claim that the questions were repetitive in nature, thus handing out an unfair advantage to those appearing in the latter slots of the ten-day test.
CAT training centres together enjoy a clientele of close to 2 lakh candidates, through classroom or correspondence courses, out of the 2.41 lakh who registered for CAT 2009.

The demand found support in BJP’s Sushma Swaraj, who said the “exam was reduced to a farce and that it should be scrapped.” For the next year, the test should be held after proper rehearsal, Ms Swaraj told ET on Wednesday.
The Congress expressed concern about students affected by cancellations, but put the onus of resolving the issue on the IIMs. Party spokesperson Abhishek Manu Singhvi said the authorities had accepted their faults and “that should leave no room for further worry.” Another spokesperson Manish Tewari said “If at all problems still persist, the government will deal with it keeping in mind the best interests of the students at heart.”

The BJP’s endorsement of the training centres’ demand came even as one of the centres is preparing to file a PIL. “Questions have been repeated in different slots. A significant number of questions of the previous year’s CAT papers have also been repeated. The number of questions and the difficulty level of each section are in common public knowledge.

This will benefit students who are scheduled to take the test in the second half of the test window. The CAT 2009 has not been fair to a large number of students. In such a scenario, I would request the IIMs to scrap the ongoing computer-based CAT and revert to the paper-based test at least for this year,” said Ajay Arora, director, Triumphant Institute of Management Education, one of the CAT preparatory centres. Other top training institutes like PT Education and Career Launcher too have joined the chorus seeking scrapping of the test.

PT Education COO Manish Saraf said that he has been getting requests from students to file a Public Interest Litigation (PIL) on their behalf. He said, the institute would request the court to scrap the test altogether and switch to the pen and paper format until things are set for a computer-based test.


“It was clear in the first three days itself that the competition had become uneven and unfair to the aspirants. There has been a distinct dumping down of the process and the prestigious CAT has now become a mockery where all kind of fraud is possible. In such a scenario, IIMs should immediately scrap the test and reschedule the same,” said Sandeep Manudhane, founder-chairman, PT Education.

It may be mentioned here that the IIMs in a statement on Monday said they were fixing the glitches and that the examination would go on as per schedule. For those, who had to sit out, the exam is being rescheduled.
A section of MBA aspirants in fact commended the uniform difficulty levels of the CAT question papers. However, the training centres insist otherwise.

“Scrapping the test is the only fair thing to happen now. It will not be very late for the IIMs to take the decision now. It may be a tough call, but it may probably the best thing to do. The most critical part is that even if they plug all tech glitches, they cannot take away the fact that questions were repeated and technical glitches created problems for a number of aspirants,” says Shiva Kumar of Career Launcher. Vinayak Kudva, product head at IMS Learning, said that his institute would conduct an internal survey among its students to understand the magnitude of the problem. “There is no level-playing field in CAT this year,” he said.