University’s Gender Commotion

University Grants Commission’s National Eligibility Test is one entrace exam that I would never be able to crack however hard I tried. This exam is taken by candidates who are keen to land university level teaching jobs or secure junior research fellowships in universities. Inter alia, the most recent iteration of the exam that was conducted last weekend contained questions like:

At primary school stage, most teachers should be women because:

a) can teach children better than men

b) know basic content better than men

c) are available on lower salaries

d) can deal with children with love and affection

🙂

The exam (for university teaching posts) was first rolled out in 1989 after considerable delibration on the poor quality of individuals being selected in the teaching profession. If the above is the standard of the questions being asked, I wonder how is the exam living up to it’s billing. Given that 13,000 candidates took the test last weekend, would such questions differentiate talent? Presence of such absurd and silly questions seems to be one of the reasons why the cut-off marks is in the range of 55% – 65% (depending on your ‘category’). On top of that there is an awesome amount of mismanagement of results and the examination has seen it’s share of controversies and dharnas and protests. There have been candidates who have scored lesser than the stated cut-off threshold yet have been selected!! Aren’t we cool?