Examinations are a necessary, if not an essential, part of education. But the Joint Entrance Examinations for studying medicine and engineering in West Bengal had come to embody an irremediable functionalism in the state’s higher education system. Their dire importance for the most coveted of careers makes the higher secondary examinations pale into insignificance, making most ambitious students neglect the latter to throw themselves into the JEE fray. As a result, the foundations of their broad-based education, before specializing for careers, get neglected to the point of being rendered redundant. But, wonder of wonders, this is set to change. Recent reforms in the engineering half of the JEE have, among other changes, considerably pulled up the weightage of the higher secondary results. And this is, indeed, a very good thing. Minimum marks have been stipulated for the HS physics, chemistry and biology papers, and — just as significantly — for the English paper.

Yet rethinking the JEE should not stop at this. More fundamentally, why should the JEE exist at all? Why should medicine and engineering have centralized entrance examinations, when all other subjects manage quite well with entrance tests conducted by individual institutions? Is this because these two subjects are more important than the rest? Or does the government think that the engineering and medical colleges are incapable of handling entrance tests on their own? Neither reason is acceptable, and it is far more sensible to work out ways in which the autonomy of individual institutions may be enhanced by letting them conduct their own entrance examinations. In fact, every other centrally administered examination — those conducted by the school, college and public service commissions — should also go. Institutions admitting new students, or employing new faculty, should be able to make their own selections, without interference from the government.