BANGALORE : On April 27 the Indian Institutes of
Management announced that the Common Admission Test
(CAT) for admission to IIMs and over 118 other B-schools
would go online from this year and that the job has been
assigned to Prometric ETS, a US based firm which excels
in online examinations.
With this the 33-year-old pen-and-pencil format of the
CAT will come to an end and sources at IIM Bangalore
confirmed that CAT 2009 would be a
computer-based test (CBT).
Dr Amarnath Krishnaswamy, a faculty member of
IIM-Bangalore and the spokesman for CAT committee said,
‘‘IIMs have selected Prometric ETS, a US based firm,
after a very elaborate search process to be our partner
in delivering the computer-assisted CAT. The details on
the computerized CAT would be made available soon.’’ ETS
Prometric are already conducting globally recognized
tests such as Graduate Record Examination (GRE) and Test
of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL).
‘‘The CAT will be a CBT from this year onwards. The test
will be conducted in a window of about ten days,
sometime at the end of the calendar year. CBT CAT will
be a candidate-friendly test in terms of flexibility in
the selection of test date and ease of registration
process,” Dr Krishnaswamy said.
The aspirants who had expected the CAT to turn into
something similar to GMAT will, in fact, find that the
format of the test has not altered much. As of now, CAT
has merely been computerised. So instead of circling the
answers on an OMR sheet, candidates will be clicking
answers on a computer screen.
An IIM official said there was a likelihood of three
sessions of the CAT being held in one day across the
country in around 100 centres in such a way that
approximately 3 lakh candidates could be accommodated in
10 days. “For this, we will be developing about 3,000
questions, instead of merely 100 that we come up with
for each year’s test,” said the faculty member.
According to an official communiqué CAT will be a
candidate-friendly test in terms of flexibility in the
selection of test date, ease of registration process,
better physical environment and test experience and
enhanced
security in terms of biometric identification of
candidates and video monitoring. CBT format also would
improve communication between candidates and IIMs in
terms of programme information, test delivery, receipt
of admit cards, and receipt of score reports.
The test has been necessitated by the increasing number
of candidates appearing for CAT. While about 95,000
candidates took CAT in 2003, the number rose to about
2.5 lakh in 2008, indicating 163 per cent increase. This
has resulted in a severe strain on the IIMs to conduct
CAT in its existing format.
IIM
Bangalore hikes fee to Rs 11 lakh
BANGALORE : Taking cue from IIM Ahemdabad the
Indian Institute of Management here hiked its fee for
the Post-Graduate Programme to Rs 11 lakh, and increased
the student intake capacity to 350 to accommodate the 27
per cent OBC quota from academic year 2009-2010.
After an IIM-B Board of Governors meeting here on April
2, Institute director Prof Pankaj Chandra announced that
the Board had decided to hike the fee for the 2009-10
batch to Rs 5.25 lakh for the first year and Rs 5.75
lakh for the second.
The fee has been hiked by Rs 25,000 for this year’s
batch and Rs 75,000 for the same batch the next academic
year.
Earlier, the IIM-B charged around Rs 9.5 lakh for its PG
programme. The fee was split into Rs 4.5 lakh for the
first year and Rs 5 lakh for the second.
Justifying the hike, he said: “As per the Sixth Pay
Commission, teachers’ pension has been increased. We
have around 200 professors and the pension has gone up
significantly. ”Infrastructure demands due to the
implementation of the OBC quota were cited as another
reason. Prof Chandra also pointed out that the institute
did not receive any government grant.
On the OBC quota, Prof Chandra said: “For the
forthcoming academic year, 350 students will be admitted
as per the quota implementation. At present 275 students
are being admitted. We will add another section to
implement the quota as the student intake has increased.
Simultaneously, the students intake in other programmes
like the executive programmes and the public policy
programme will also be increased.” As much as Rs 45
crore has been earmarked for the construction of
students hostel, teachers’ quarters and classrooms. “We
will begin the construction of new classrooms soon. A
teachers’ residential quarters, a cafe and a students’
hostel with 300 rooms will also be constructed on the
campus,” Chandra added.
Ahemdabad
IIM hikes fee, becomes costliest
AHEMDABAD : The Indian Institute of Management,
Ahmedabad, (IIM-A) has increased fees for its Post
Graduate Programme in Management (PGPM) by Rs 50,000
from the year 2010-11, the institute director, Dr Samir
Baura said here on March 29.
“Last year we had decided that the fee for PGPM for
2008-09 would be Rs 5.5 lakh and for 2009-10 it would be
Rs 6 lakh. The Board of the Institute has decided that
the fee for year 2009-10 for the coming batch will
remain the same,” Mr Barua said after a meeting of IIM-A
Board of Governors here.
When asked about the rationale behind the hike in the
fee, Baura said, "with the passage of time the cost of
teaching goes up. We have to account for increase in the
cost of everything."
But for the second year, that is 2010-11, the fee will
be Rs 6.5 lakh, an increase of Rs 50,000. So the batch
of 2009-11 of the PGPM will be paying a maximum of Rs
12.5 lakhs for the course, he said.
“But the fee waiver scheme which we had started last
year will continue for the next year. There were 21
students last year who did not have to pay anything at
all for the course,” Barua said.
Barua said foreign universities keep on revising their
teaching methods and programme. So we too need to
continue evolving to compete with them. When asked if
the increase in fees will continue on a regular basis,
he said, That we don’t know. It will depend on the
situation next year. The Board will decide next year if
there has to be another revision or not, he added.
Taking about the average fee collection, Barua said it
will go down considerably as the OBC quota will be
increased to 13 per cent this year from last year’s six
per cent.
OBC applies to mainly non-creamy layer so the income
levels will be below Rs 4.5 lakh per annum. Therefore
large number of OBC students will be entitled for
subsidies under our fee waiver scheme, he said.
Chairman of the IIM-A board of governors, Vijaypath
Singhania said, “despite the hike in fees, we are
leaving large part of our increase in cost uncovered
which will come from our corpus.”
He said IIM-A will be making arrangements to accommodate
additional number of OBC students, for which the Central
government has already committed Rs 34 crore for capital
expenditure. The approximate increase in the intake of
IIM-A’s PGPM course this year will be 353 including the
OBC students.
The global meltdown has also impacted money-spinning
executive programmes run by the institute, the sources
said. So much so that the institute had decided to seek
central grants for infrastructure expansion programmes —
something it had not done in the last five years after
going on a collision course with the HRD ministry during
the NDA regime.
Prof Devi
Singh, director, IIM-Lucknow, soon after the declaration of CAT
results on January 8, told the reporters that the IIM expects to add
60 more seats in the PGP business administration course from next
session.
Final
announcement of the increase in seats will be made after completing
some formalities. He said that group discussion and interviews will be
held in February. The process is expected to conclude in April
following which final admissions will be done.
Regarding
OBC quota in admissions, Prof Singh said that IIMs will go by the
verdict of the Supreme Court which is currently hearing the case on
implementation of reservation in elite institutes like IITs and IIMs.
While around
1300 candidates were called for group discussions and interview last
year for admissions in 240 seats in PGP business administration and 30
seats in agri-business course, the number can increase this year in
proportion to the rise in seats.
The list of
candidates to be called for group discussion and interview has been
finalised. Candidates will soon receive invitations from the
institute.
Over 2.3
lakh candidates had appeared for CAT held on November 19, 2007, for
admissions to various IIMs. The CAT score is also used by many other
management institutes, including management courses of the Lucknow
University, for admissions.
Meanwhile, IIM Bangalore is yet to make public its cut-off percentile.
