New JEE format: More IIT aspirants likely to join coaching centres

Institutes expect student enrolment to go up 80% in 2013, to increase fees

Three months after the joint entrance examination (JEE) was tweaked to introduce the new formats — JEE Main and JEE Advanced — coaching institutes claim students have begun flocking to them for enrolment.

While some coaching institutes have already registered a rise in numbers, others predict enrolments for the coming academic year would be up anywhere between 50 per cent and 80 per cent. To make the most of it, most coaching institutes are planning to hike the annual fee upwards of Rs 10,000 per student. On an average, the annual fee is about Rs 50,000 per student.

Kota-based Career Point Infosystems expects an over 50 per cent increase in the number of students. “With the new format, we are taking care of the board as well as competitive examination preparation for students. Institutions which do not focus on both will lose enrolments. There will also be a hike in fees by around 20 per cent,” said Pramod Maheshwari, CEO, Career Point Infosystems, Kota.

IN DEMAND

• A few institutes are already registering a rise in the number of enrolments
   
• Rs 50,000 is the average fee that coaching institutes charge
   
• The fee now is expected to be raised by over Rs 10,000
   
• Institutes that provides coaching for both IIT-JEE mains and advanced, will be in demand
   
• Kota-based Career Point Infosystems expect over 50 per cent increase in the number of students

Career Point Infosystems, the only listed coaching institute, expects 20,000-25,000 students next year against 15,000 students enrolled this year and last year.

It is expected that more enrolments will be registered. While I cannot give you a number, the enrolments are estimated to be quite high. Also, academic fee will certainly see an increase.

In July 2012, it was decided that from 2013, the JEE would be held in two parts — Main and Advanced. Those applying to the IITs would have to appear for JEE-Main. Only the top 150,000 who qualify would be eligible for taking the JEE-Advanced, which would be held a few weeks after the Main exam.

The new test is an amalgamation of the All India Engineering Entrance Examination (AIEEE) and the IIT-JEE, where the Main exam will be equivalent to AIEEE, and Advanced will be equivalent to the IIT-JEE. JEE is the qualifying examination for admission to the IITs. For admission to the IIT, based on the JEE-Advanced, a student should be ranked among the top 20 percentile of his/her respective Class XII Board. Currently, a student scoring 60 per cent in their Class XII Board is eligible for a seat in the IITs. There are 32 Boards in India with different patterns of examination and evaluation.

While JEE-Main will be held by the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE), JEE-Advanced will be held by IITs. Admission to National Institutes of Technology (NITs) and Indian Institutes of Information Technology (IIITs) will be based on JEE-Main scores.

Several deemed universities can also use JEE-Main exam scores to admit students after fixing a minimum percentage criteria.

“At present, we have 1,200 students. We have already begun admissions for the next academic year and we see the numbers at 2,200, an increase of over 80 per cent,” said Chandan Dikshit, planning and strategy head at Rao IIT Academy, an IIT-JEE coaching institute.

According to Dikshit, tutorials that train students for both Main and Advanced will be in demand. Besides, tie-ups between coaching institutes and colleges or schools will help students, so that they don’t waste time travelling to coaching centres to attend classes.

Industry players said with CBSE set to handle the JEE Main paper, the examination is likely to be tough. The process of tweaking the examination pattern began when the ministry of human resource development (MHRD) concurred that due to the culture of coaching classes, the schooling system has been thrown out of the window. So much so that students do not attend schools due to the pressure of such training programmes.

A committee, formed under professor Idi Chandy of IIT-Madras, established a correlation between school performance and IIT performance, inferring students were doing better in school. Thus, to promote school education and to dissuade the coaching culture, MHRD had been considering changing the IIT-JEE format.